Intro
As engineers, we are used to having things in our control - the outcome of the task normally depends on our implementation.
Growing from senior to a lead role requires a mindset shift. You become a multiplier for the team and helping others around you becomes one of the main priorities. The overall success of the team and projects is what becomes important.
Let’s take a look at a situation that can happen after becoming a senior and staying in the role for some time.
Without action, you can feel stuck in the senior position
You have grown to a senior position and you are feeling ecstatic. The first thing after you become a senior, you want to ensure that you have all the necessary skills covered. You learn and grow.
After some time passing, you are still in the senior position and now it feels like you are not growing anymore. It’s quite common for engineers to feel stuck in the position and not know which steps to take to grow toward a tech lead / team lead position.
I've been there and I hesitated for too long towards the next step. I believe that my growth was stagnating because I didn’t know that. I was overthinking about my career path.
It’s really important to continue to grow and find ways to do that. I like to say, that if we are not growing, we are stagnating. There are so many ways that we can grow in software development. And a lot of it is not technology-related at all.
Before we get into the ways to grow, let’s first make a distinction between the Tech Lead and Team Lead role.
Difference between Tech Lead and Team Lead
The complete responsibilities of both vary from company to company, but one thing is clear. Team Lead role is more focused on people management and Tech Lead role is more focused on leading the technical vision and implementation.
Mostly, the companies are using one or both of the roles. In my teams, I like to have both. Which role you should go for? It’s totally up to you, both roles are great starting points to grow in any of the paths - management (engineering manager), IC (Staff Engineer) or architecture (Software Architect).
Since the Team Lead is more people-focused it will give you a bit of an edge for the management path and Tech Lead role will give you a bit of an edge in the IC and architecture path. But you can utilize the skills that you acquired in any of the paths.
Now, let’s get into my top tips that can help you grow into a lead role. My perspective and recommended steps are backed by my experience as an engineer who has grown to lead roles and as a manager who has promoted engineers to lead roles.
Make sure to let your manager know about your goals and aspirations
This is really important because if your manager doesn’t know about your goals and where you wish to grow, they won’t be able to put you in the position to showcase the skills needed to grow to that position.
In a 1:1 meeting, share your excitement about the role and ask about direction and how can you get there. Or even better, by reading this article you would already know what skills are needed and how you can showcase them, start doing them ASAP and let your manager know what you are doing.
There is also a limited scope that your manager can see about what you are doing daily, so it’s really important to keep all of your wins close and note them down. Let’s get into that next.
Keep a brag list of all the wins that you achieved
I highly recommend keeping a brag list of all the wins that you have made. The reason is close to what I mentioned above. Your manager doesn’t see or probably note down all of the wins that you achieved.
Therefore it’s really important that you do that and keep the notes close to you, so when the time comes to talk about the promotion, you have all of the reasons to promote you within your notes.
You have successfully onboarded a new engineer, you are mentoring others or you have played a key role in delivering an important project. Make sure to note all of this down. It will help you immensely.
What I did and I still do (as a CTO) is: I keep all of the wins I achieve in my Notion page as bullet points. I use Notion for all of my notes, so in case I get asked about my achievements, I always have it with me.
No matter the role you currently hold, this is really important to do. It will help you a lot to showcase your value and move forward in your career.
Become the go-to person or an expert in a certain domain.
Is there something that you have a really good understanding of? Is there a certain technology or library that you know better than anyone else? Make sure to take responsibility and ownership to help everyone else get better at it.
Become a person that others will go to when they would need help. Write documentation, prepare learning sessions and do code reviews on that particular part.
This provides immense value to the organization because your efforts are considered as multipliers (you make everyone around you better), which is the essence of being a great leader.
Just doing this alone will create opportunities for you, because you developed the reputation of a responsible person who can get things done and at the same time help others.
Propose an impactful improvement to the codebase and own the implementation
Propose an impactful improvement to the codebase and if it is accepted, you should also volunteer to lead the implementation. This would automatically make you a lead for that implementation.
The more impactful it is, the bigger the value is going to be. Successfully leading the implementation will be one of the main factors for your promotion. At the same time, you will learn a LOT about being a leader, how to influence and how to successfully finish projects. You will also develop a reputation as a person who can get things done.
This is very powerful because one of the main important things managers look for in people is that they can take “not so clear requirements” and deliver the exactly needed solution without supervision.
Become product-minded
Figuring out what creates the biggest impact and contributes to the business value the most is one of the most important things you can do as an engineer.
You are good at technical things and at the same time, you understand the business side and what it takes to delight the customers. You provide immense value with that understanding.
"Why are we building this thing?" - This is one of the great questions to ask, before starting to implement a new functionality. It gives you insights and the motivation behind it.
Being curious about the product and the business will enable you to create great technical solutions that customers are going to love.
To help you with this, I have prepared a list of questions that you can use.
🎁 Notion Template: List of questions to ask before making a technical decision
Use this list of 35+ product/business-oriented and technical questions to really understand WHY something is needed.
You can find the template here: 🎁 Notion Template: List of questions to ask before making a technical decision
Start writing online if you haven’t already
Writing online regularly had so many benefits for me that I just had to include it in the list. You help others and at the same time, you cement your knowledge on particular topics. It helps you as well with your personal branding and showcasing you as an expert in a particular field.
If you are a Senior Software Engineer in order to get to the lead role, you need to showcase your leadership skills and that you can successfully lead the team.
Writing regularly, where you share your knowledge on particular topics will help you a lot (plus points if you write about leadership topics as well).
I like to say that good writing is a superpower for engineers.
- Giving a lot of context in a few words.
- Writing very easy-to-read and understand documentation.
- Doing great code reviews.
This automatically transfers to writing good code as well. The mindset is the same.
What others are saying?
I have asked the LinkedIn community to share their #1 tip for growing from senior to a lead role. And there were a lot of great responses. Here they are:
“Sitting back and not asking for feedback is the worst thing you can do as an engineer. If you want to improve, there has to be a constant feedback loop.”
— Ankur Tyagi
“Become the go-to person for your engineering product area.”
— Caleb Mellas
“Ask for feedback on what to do to get better. Ask for support. Be patient.”
— Daniel Lock
“The brag list will also help jog your memory for writing resumes and answering behavior and technical deep dive interviews.”
— Mike Thornton
“Find opportunities and ask for them instead of waiting to be given.”
— Anemari Fiser
“Take ownership and be a self-starter (i.e., can work with minimal supervision, brings new ideas to the team).”
— Markus Kaufmann
“Understand what it means to lead people. It’s not the same as being a craftsman at your current role. It is about people and caring.”
— Tim Ward
“Develop further into becoming a safe pair of hands releasing to Prod, Looking after Prod and Designing systems.”
— James Parra
Last words
There are a number of different ways to grow from senior to a lead role. You can either use some of them or all of them, it’s up to you.
Keep in mind that the more you showcase your abilities, the faster you are going to be recognized as a candidate that would be great for the role!
Learn more
To learn more, you can check out the Engineering Leadership newsletter, where I share similar tips and advice on how to be a great engineering leader. I publish 2 new articles every week!
