How to become a team/department lead?
from YUART@feddit.org to programming@programming.dev on 26 Jan 20:52
https://feddit.org/post/24907875
from YUART@feddit.org to programming@programming.dev on 26 Jan 20:52
https://feddit.org/post/24907875
Hi,
How can I become a team/department lead? I guess I’m starting to feel tired of having a vision and not being able to implement it because I have 0 political power in a company.
I thought that the easiest way was to join a startup as the first person of a “department” in a company, but now I’m not sure how it’s possible to get hired to a startup on the early stage.
#programming
threaded - newest
Have you told your boss (or his boss) that you want to lead a department? Most bosses I had would have been open to such a suggestion and worked out a path to that.
Otherwise look for a job that specifically offers a leadership position.
Hi, no. I cannot imagine telling my boss that I think I’m better than he so I want to replace him.
The problem of telling a boss of my boss is that I have no real pro arguments why should he choose me as a leader to replace the current lead, that has been working in the company much longer than I am.
I also can’t really resolve problems of a boss of my boss because 90% of my tasks - is a “customer” support and low effort copy paste bug fixes, so I have no place to “show myself”.
I’m not talking about my current job only, it’s my 6th company now, and previous experiences were more or less the same.
You don’t have to replace your boss. Just help them organise stuff. A healthy (in capitalist terms) company is steadily growing, making management more and more complex.
Maybe they want to get a promotion themselves. Having someone already available to pick up their responsibilities gives them better arguments for their own promotion.
And, if they aren’t recognizing you for your efforts, hopefully you’re learning the process enough to move on to another company? Sometimes just being able to “speak the language” of that position in an interview is enough to get on the door, even if you’re light on actual experience. Many people are doing the jobs of their managers already!
Really? That seems a little unusual. The handful of places I’ve worked have all asked me what kind of direction I want to move in, with management path being an option (which I didn’t pursue).
Actually getting those roles is another story. I’ve seen leaders go for many years without becoming managers, others switch over somewhat quick. But it seems like being open about what you want you work toward should, in a good work environment, get you some support toward it.
Doesn’t have to mean you’re trying to steal your boss’s job. Could be stepping into a support or backup role for them, being ready to fill the shoes if they get promoted or job hop or retire, or could just mean getting some leadership practice. You can frame it as professional development, to be ready for other internal lead roles if they open. Then when/if they don’t, use that experience to apply at other companies too.
A good boss won't have problems with that - they are always looking for their next position anyway and having a replacement ready to go is good - if you can't be replaced you can't be promoted. A good boss will help your get involved with the politics needed to be good at this. A good boss will put your name up for leads in a different department where there is an opening that you wouldn't even know about.
Note that I said good boss above. Not all bosses are good.
I’d like to humbly question the notion of “being able to implement a vision because you’re the department head”. Usually that just means more meetings.
Well, if meetings mean I can improve things for myself, my teammates, and company - I’m ok with that
Agreed. I’m a technical lead at a startup. You know that guy in Office Space whose job it is to basically ferry messages between the engineers and the customer? I feel like that is my job. I attend meetings and pass along messages because they are in a different time zone.
I:
Some of it is because I’m relatively new, but mostly my job is filling in for my boss in meetings because he’s spread so thin so he can focus on strategic stuff. I feel like my job is just to have 30 years of experience so people take things seriously when I say them. There are people who will ignore a request if it comes from my team, but are super helpful when I ask. There is clearly value to me being here, but I had envisioned something different with mentoring and doling out technical wisdom like “this doesn’t adhere to SOLID principles” or “the best practice here is to do this.”
The thing I’ve spent the most time doing developing a system where all the little shit I’m responsible for doesn’t fall through the cracks — mine or someone else’s.
Being a team lead is not about using others to implement your vision. You’d be better off founding your own company.
Hi, maybe I chose incorrect words, but under a “vision” I meant “better ways to do my job, better ways to help others to do their job, and better/new ways for company/project be more successful in different business metrics”.
I agree that my own company would be the best case, but that’s easier said than done, unfortunately.
As lower/middle management, you are crushed from both sides. Upper management demands from you what to do, and the people under you hate what you are forced to implement. It’s actually really annoying and difficult. I was department lead and went back to just developing.
You don’t have to be the first person. I joined a startup a long time ago as a regular engineer and they made me team lead within a year. Startups generally move a bit faster and a lot more chaotically. Especially when they’re growing fast. You do have to be good but having a vision also helps.
I stuck with them through acquisitions etc. and everything slowed down a lot. Should have gotten out of the large corporation life earlier tbh.
I think this really depends on the company’s culture and size. From my experience, having only worked in smaller teams, I’d say trying to partake in management duties proactively has probably been most successful for colleagues who wanted to lead.
So when your boss or supervisor has a meeting about your product, ask if you can join. If you have a well thought-out idea on how to improve things, like introducing better processes, fixing recurring issues, introducing better tools or something like that, talk about it. Being visible as someone who genuinely cares about the success of your team, product and company is, in my experience, probably the most important thing.
Just make sure this is actually what you want. Depending on the company, you might end up doing very little programming and lots of spreadsheets and misery instead. Find out what’s keeping your current team lead busy and ask yourself if that’s really what you want to do.
Do good work, be interested and show interest, and be in a recipiable environment.
If your current environment is overbearing with power politics you don’t succeed in and you want change you’ll probably have to change environments.
If you want impact consider whether smaller companies and teams would be beneficial. You may be able to fill your desires of impact and control even without becoming a formal lead role. Or become one implicitly or naturally quicker in smaller less formal and structured environments.
You can also look for job offerings for those kinds of roles specifically. No need to seek out a climb in house when you can find more direct routes.
I can only speak from my own experience and what I’ve seen, but generally the best leaders are the ones who emerge naturally from within the team. You shouldn’t need to “prove yourself” to your superiors but to your coworkers instead.
Most teams don't want or need a boss, they need a leader
<img alt="" src="https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/3c0cc0a1-0723-4ad5-8f89-cfaac529048f.jpeg">
I don’t know what your “vision” looks like, but start small. Feel like some manual task could be automated? Write a script and share it with the team. Think something should be done differently? Bring it up and see what others in the team think. The point is, you don’t need actual “power” within the company to start implementing your vision. Unless of course the company culture is just horrible, in which case you’d probably be better off looking for other opportunities regardless…
Startups are hiring all of the time, they’re just harder to find because they’re always a company you’ve never heard of, and their job descriptions are sometimes a little more niche than they need to be.
In terms of implementing a vision without political power, the best impacts I’ve had have always come from forming a consensus with all of the different stakeholders at my level in the company before trying to move the idea up the ladder.
Of the ideas are good they will probably benefit multiple departments. If your leader isn’t receptive to new ideas, working with other departments to get their leaders fired up about the idea may be a way to move forward.
Been a team lead in title at my company (small software company, out of the start up phase, but was a startup when I joined)) for over a decade. Only figured out how to be a leader in reality over the last 5ish years.
Do you want the title of team lead, or to actually be a leader on your team? Those are often two different things.
Getting the title depends a lot on the politics of your employer. A good place will promote based on merit, others won’t.
Being an actual leader is actually a lot more straightforward: serve the team. Be the driving force behind improving their work lives. That means communicating with them regularly both about what they are finding difficult (and then being a driver in finding a solution) and celebrating them when things go well. It means being a champion for the good ideas others have. It also means asking for help from the team when it’s needed; stay humble.
Through this constant communication a couple of things should start to happen:
Do all that and people will start naturally looking to you.
My experience might not match others but honestly I would recommend avoiding this trap. It’s just compromise and disappointment all the way up. Then you’ll be blamed for anything that goes wrong despite only 15% of your plan being accepted by executives. If the company culture is different and fosters leadership instead of stifling it then maybe it could work. At the end of the day you’re probably still going to be making someone else’s dreams come true until you start your own company.