If you find yourself teaching your team take a step back.
The best managers build super star teams and gives the teams ownership and autonomy. You are in a good position if the team is teaching you, not the other way around.
Try to build a team made up of people technically superior to you. And give them ownership, this is key. It is not just about finding engineers who take ownership. It’s about giving engineers ownership and getting out of their way.
This does not apply in all circumstances. My jump into tech lead came as the old tech lead (15+ years xp) and young superstar(~4 years with wisdom beyond his years) departed from it.
The replacements were a developer just coming off a PIP and a new graduate with zero industry experience, having not interned. I still kept the focus on developing the team as much as possible but the candle needed to be burned on both ends: taking on a large majority of implementation whilst quietly fixing mistakes made as to not shake growing confidence were commonplace throughout the first 6 months.
Towards the end of our involvement in our product I’m proud to say that both developers had outgrew their ranks and delegation and trust came without thought. I was pretty close to burnout by the end of that year if I’m honest with myself though and my own career progression has without doubt stalled due to it
> I was pretty close to burnout by the end of that year if I’m honest with myself though and my own career progression has without doubt stalled due to it
Sounds like you had a tough time but empowered the team to succeed. Maybe with some personal cost to yourself.
How would you approach the situation knowing what you know now? What would you do differently?
I'm talking about an ideal to strive for, so of course this is rare.
If you want to do management long term and manage bigger and bigger teams without burning out this is what you need to strive for and ultimately impliment aspects of this if you can't impliment it fully.
For bigger teams you even need people with superior management skill sets in order to delegate.
I think every organisation has people of different aptitudes, intrinsic motivation and interests. Building a team of superstars is meaningless. It's the management version of "make it better" or "it doesn't work" type feedbacks that don't give any necessary insights to actually do it. Building a team of people technically superior to you? In what way. Does your devops guy need to be an expert in language design?
On the subject of teaching your team you're right however. Instead aim to create an environment that fosters sharing. In my team I created a weekly tech share which the team does on rotation. It's been great for harmonising the team.
>I think every organisation has people of different aptitudes, intrinsic motivation and interests. Building a team of superstars is meaningless. It's the management version of "make it better" or "it doesn't work" type feedbacks that don't give any necessary insights to actually do it. Building a team of people technically superior to you? In what way. Does your devops guy need to be an expert in language design?
I'm just talking about the ideal you should strive for. Given the opportunity this is what you should try to do. Of course like many ideals, you rarely have the ability or resources to fully implement the ideal.
>Building a team of collaborators with a baseline of technical aptitude and a willingness to learn is what most people should strive for.
What I meant to say is, your philosophy of building teams is for inferior managers. People who cannot perform above the baseline.
Normal and high performing managers always strive for hitting something above the baseline. Not to be insulting, but logically if you think this way than you must be inferior. Just speaking out of pure logic, no malice intended.
That depends on what tech lead role means in OP's context. It might me a team lead, in which case you are right, or something like coding architect which is usually one of the most senior members of the team with additional soft skills. Such person is expected to teach others.
The best managers build super star teams and gives the teams ownership and autonomy. You are in a good position if the team is teaching you, not the other way around.
Try to build a team made up of people technically superior to you. And give them ownership, this is key. It is not just about finding engineers who take ownership. It’s about giving engineers ownership and getting out of their way.