Level Up: Choosing The Technical Leadership Path

src: Level Up: Choosing The Technical Leadership Path - 2025-05-29

Complexity

2 types of complexity:

• essential complexity
• accidental complexity
  • C → Java: no memory management
  • self-host infrastructure → cloud: easier to choose the type of infrastructure
  • inapropriate abstractions → “simple” code

A lack of technical leadership increases accidental complexity.

What is technical leadership?

Technical leadership is the act of aligning a group of people in a technical context.

Example: mis-alignement in pull request process.

Technical alignment

• lack of
  • group of individuals
  • priorities individual task
    • work system disincentivizes us against working together as a team and create mis-alignement
  • “I’ll do it my own way”
• stronger
  • high performing team
  • prioritizes long-term
  • strong collaboration

Who is accountable for technical leadership?

The speaker is suggesting to have a different model as the actual ladder evolution, which is either IC (Individual Contributor) or Management. He proposes the trident model (might not needed for all companies):

• technical leader
  • names (depending on the companies): lead dev, tech lead, staff engineer*
    • accountable for technical alignment
  • 70-80% time spent: leading technical topics and teams
    • aligning team
    • technical vision
    • technical risk management
    • tech debt management
    • growing technical knowledge
• individual contributor
  • levels
    • staff engineer*, senior software engineer
      • create some technical alignment
    • software engineer, junior software engineer
      • maintain technical alignment
  • 70-80% time spent: “Executing, doing”
    • designing
    • testing
    • coding
• management
  • engineering manager
  • 70-80% time spent: managing the system
    • supporting
    • planning
    • budgeting
    • organising

Leadership skills:

• empathy
• conflict resolution
• feedback
• coaching
• self-awareness
• influencing
• communication
• motivation
• delegation

How to start technical leadership?

• look for misalignment/neglect
  • ex:
    • why does everyone have their own special build script?
    • pull request reviews are really different depending on who completes it
    • why haven’t we got rid of this outdated tool?
• choose to own the issue
• seek sponsorship
• deliver value
• celebrate (and repeat)

It’s easier for manager to recognise what you are already doing, not what you might do.