A Change in Perspective – Moving from Tech Lead to Manager

I’ve been in Software Engineering since I left University as a graduate in 2006 and have performed many roles such as Software Developer, Scrum Master, Build Engineer and then in 2010, I moved into Software QA. At that point, I had several awesome mentors who I owe so much for fueling my love and passion for all things Testing/QA.

Fast-forward 6 years and I had moved teams and become the QA Tech Lead in my new team which are an Operations Engineering team. I finally got my head around the complexities of the systems we were responsible for as a team and was starting to move the teams focus to processes and ways in which i felt could move the team forward. So at this point, I felt I had got to grips with the production process.

In 2017, I started working towards becoming the manager of the local team and also taking on hiring a new team for a second project. That team were to be located in Ireland and I took on building that team from scratch. Hiring that team was my first real taste of management responsibilities. I had previously been involved in hiring from a “who would I work well with?” perspective, where as now, I was looking at the overall dynamics of the team, how they fit salary wise with the rest of the team and whether there was anything about them that might make them difficult to manage. This really opened my eyes to how things would change with my new role.

Over the next year or so, to now, there were several other parts of the role which opened my eyes to there being more differences than me just taking on line management duty of my team mates.

1. Trusting the team to be Technical

Once I got the Irish team set up, it became obvious that I couldn’t be the technical point of contact for two teams and had to start backing away from the deep down technical details and trust the teams to pick that up. It really became clear that I had to trust my team to pick up the details and I needed to enable to do them that.

 2. Time is for your People

I soon learnt that to enable the team, it required them to be my main focus. Therefore, giving them all time with me, through 1-1s and spending time sat with them at their desks, meant that I started working longer hours to give them the time they wanted/needed and then still performing the other duties i still needed to do. Over time, this has got easier to manage, but with two teams on completely different projects, it’s certainly been a challenge.

3. Difficult Conversations

One element of the role which I needed to adjust to, was having to have conversations which I wouldn’t have previously had to worry about. It really was about working out where the line is in situations and then being strong enough to talk to team members when that line is crossed. Then also being consistent to ensure that everyone is treated the same way.

4. Technical Advocate rather than Technical Leader

With having to trust the team to take on the technical leadership role, it became clear that although I still need to understand the technical detail to some degree, I would give the team the freedom to advise me on technical directions, then be their advocate when talking to others about the technology, ensuring the team know I have their back and support their decisions. While also still offering my opinion and helping to guide the team, the directions of the team would not be down to just me.

5. Someone Resigned! Was it Because of Me?

This was a tough lesson, and caused a lot of over analysing and over thinking. But ultimately, I had to try and not take it personally. Then, secondly, try to turn it into a positive as it would give me a chance to re-build the team in the way that I feel works.

6. No Favourtism

Before I became a manager, I felt I got on well with all the team I worked with, but becoming manager changed the dynamics. Some suddenly started being more formal with me and I couldn’t understand why as I hadn’t changed. There were some members who I found very easy to talk to, but I had to show that I valued all members of the team. That meant backing away from socialising with them regularly over lunch or out of work and only really doing so when all the team is present.

The Future

I love my role and I love the fact that I am learning and developing every day. I value the work my team are now able to do, with my guidance and seeing them become more self sufficient, means I am starting to be able to focus on more strategic work and still see my teams move forward, knowing I have their back, encouraging them to do the best they can.