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.
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