A good tech lead in my mind is someone with a strong technical vision who has the backbone to see their vision through, but is also very adept at ironing out the myriad issues that fracture teams. It means being an advocate for the best technical solution but compromising with the other teams in the org to meet their needs. It also means being very unpopular as a good technical lead will give commandments from on high even when they're not popular or well liked opinions.
Basically your job will be reducing friction by pissing everyone off. So it's even worse than "if you've done it right, no one will know."
In my experience, a good technical lead won't give commandments from on high. A good technical lead will consult and facilitate a discussion and mediate conflict. They will also be directive when the time is right, but only after having listened and weighed the arguments. They will also be able to explain the rationale behind those decisions.
I've had your tech lead. They're a weenie and nobody ever congeals around initiatives because they have endless meetings to debate everything all the time. Sometimes you just need to say, "do it this way or find another job." I know that's not a popular idea around the democratized millennial coddling of Silicon Valley, but honestly I'd rather have someone throw down the gavel than sit through another month of research findings meetings before we finally decide git is better than svn. Your person isn't a lead, they're a diplomat.
A really good tech lead will manage you by telling you "do it this way or find another job", but will manage the more sensitive members of the team by gently suggesting what they might want to do, and might manage the more technically-minded members of the team by pointing out the concrete pros and cons of an approach.
The point is that different people need to be managed in different ways. You might want clear direction. I will quit if told "do it this way or find another job". The best managers will interact with you in the ways that get the most out of you, while interacting with me in the ways that get the most out of me. If we were to compare notes, it's doubtful we'd believe we had the same manager.
democratized millennial coddling of Silicon Valley
What does this even mean?
I'm sorry that you felt your time was wasted in meetings, but you seem to ignore the equally bad outcome of blindly chasing a direction and pissing off all the devs who actually had some foresight.
It means what it means. Do you want me to define each word?
It doesn't mean ignoring devs who have foresight; it means looking at the options and picking the best one. Not endlessly debating. We agree on the approach but I think you misread my comment as being a unilateral decision all the way through. I'm just saying you have to be able to make a tough decision without waffling and without all of the facts but with enough conviction that people fall into line with you.
> It means what it means. Do you want me to define each word?
The most meaning that can be extracted is about your worldview.
The fact is, there are indecisive weenies, and there are over-confident blowhards, but most people fall somewhere in between. When you complain about the culture in general, especially in a get-off-my-lawn manner, it sort of pushes you into the far end of the spectrum where you start to lose credibility with your employees because they realize over time the confidence is not commensurate with the knowledge and expertise.
I'm not going to take the inter-generational warfare bait :). But I agree with what I think is your main point.
My natural tendency is to want consensus. I think that's worth attempting within a reasonable time-frame. But after some discussion, eventually a decision needs to be made.
Many decisions are reversible at a very small cost. Sometimes making the wrong decision, soon, then correcting it, soon, wastes no more time and resources than not deciding at all. Sometimes it's even preferable for morale.
Having everyone row together in the wrong direction, then change course, isn't ideal. But at least everyone is rowing in the same direction and feels like a real team. Often that's better than sitting in middle of the ocean, oars in the water, debating and going nowhere.
But as with most advice I offer unsolicited, I'm going to waffle and say, "it depends on the situation". :)
A good tech lead _knows_ when to step in to make the hard decision without lots of discussion, but he also _knows_ when to take the soft road to facilitate a fruitful discussion and to arrive on a consensus.
Otherwise, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail.
Basically your job will be reducing friction by pissing everyone off. So it's even worse than "if you've done it right, no one will know."