How To Level Up As A Tech Lead - Interview With Anemari Fiser

Hi and welcome to the Dev Leader podcast. My name is Nick Cosantino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft. In this video interview, I was joined by Ann Marie Fischer who's a career coach that has experience as a software engineer, tech lead, and engineering manager. In our conversation, we got to focus on what it means to be a tech lead. what career growth looks like, especially in terms of trying to navigate going from that senior software engineering position into a tech lead, as well as why soft skills are so important in your career development, especially if you're someone that's thinking about going down this career path. I think that this is going to be an excellent interview for you to listen to. I think that Amory has tons of awesome insights here, and I think that you're really going to enjoy it. So, sit back, have a listen, and let me know in the comments after your thoughts on this interview. Thanks and I'll see you next time. To kick things off, would you like to give us a little bit of background for uh where you're at now and how you got to where you are in your career? >> Yeah. Uh thank you so much for the invite, Nick. Uh really really happy to be here. Um a little bit about me and how I got where I where I am. Uh I would like to start with with the beginning. Um I mean I had what you would call like a straightforward path to software engineering. Um I was good at it and I just got into it. Let's let's put it like that. Um and I I got my degree in computer science, started as an engineer. Um and at some point pretty early in my career, I moved into a leadership role, the the tech lead role, which is a a role that I very passionate about. Um after that, I took some some other uh like leadership engineering roles like engineering manager, product director. Uh but my main focus for for the past four years has been helping engineers um grow in their tech careers by developing their soft skills. I do that through coaching, training, writing um and um and that that's my basically that's where I am today and that's the main uh focus of my work. >> That's awesome. So given that you had uh what some might argue is like a more traditional kind of approach going to post-secary education and stuff like that like did you know early on were you like did when you as you were growing up were you like that's where I'm going or did it happen kind of like in high school or like but when did you kind of know like that's the path I'm going on? I think I knew pretty early on like uh I started learning informatics in like fifth grade and I realized I'm I like it and I'm pretty good at it and my dad always had this um this perspective. He was saying that the only way to make it in life is if you know math. >> Okay. And so if you um and only one goal that I had for my career at least at that point it was uh financial stability was a very important um like aim for me and so combining those two in Romania where I'm from um at that point it was like basically being in tech. >> So I just put them one and one and together and I I ended up in tech. Um, I mean it was like the the straightforward way to go, giving that what I was good at and uh giving my my focus and and to financial stability. So, yeah, it's pretty it's pretty straightforward right there. >> Yeah. No, it's awesome. I remember my my father was kind of similar. I guess my mother and father were both like, "Hey, like math like you better you seem to be good at like stick with that. Don't don't ever lose that." And I remember being like, "I don't like math. Like I don't want to do math." Um, yeah, kind of kind of interesting, kind of similar in that regard. And I think too on the financial stability part, I I find like some people maybe kind of go to extremes on this where some people are like, it's only financial, like what what's the highest paying job I can possibly have? And then on the other side, I find that some people are um almost like they steer away from like it's it's like wrong to talk about the financial part like that's uh like you know, morals and values like that shouldn't be the focus. Um, but it I mean it sounds like for you you were saying like that actually like having something that is going to be financially stable is a ve very big component for a career. >> Yeah. I mean I think there's a diff differentiation between stability and aim for high paid jobs. Right. Right. Um I mean stability it's making making sure you're in a market where you're going to have work to do. Like that was kind of my level. Um if you're and if you keep working you're going to grow, you're going to have opportunities. Um there is at least from my perspective at that point there is no blocker there is no stopper it's just you through hard work you're you're you're going to grow which I think it's very different than having that clear aim of always going for >> page exactly actually in my career I always prioritize learning over over gain >> um and I was always going for the roles that u challenged me that gave me new opportunities I think that's also um something that helped me grow as I was growing to like different leadership roles and and learning different things um this allowed me to to get exposed to a lot of different things um without worrying right again I had the stabilities I didn't have to worry about money but I didn't chase it at the at the next level I think it's all about the the goal and what is it important for you and there's different strategies and paths for for both that doesn't make one or or the other better >> before we continue on this is just a quick reminder that I do have courses available on domain. If you're just getting started in your programming journey and you want to learn C, you can head over to dome train. I have a getting started in C course. It's approximately 5 hours of content taking you from absolutely no experience to being able to program in C. And after that, I have my deep dive course which will take you to the next level with another 6 hours of content so that you can start building basic applications. Head over to dorain and check it out. Yeah. And I I like that a lot because the the reason I framed it like that is that if I pick two extremes like that, I kind of a general philosophy I have is that when we take extremes like that, there's probably somewhere not necessarily directly in the middle, but some place in between those that is a little bit more sustainable, a little bit more realistic. Um, and I I really like that you were talking about stability. like it's not maximize the number, but if the goal is stability, that might mean that um you know the the pay in terms of your compensation isn't the absolute maximum, but say it's it's reasonable, it's good, you're happy with it, and given how you're approaching your job, you're also able to navigate and find other opportunities as they come up. You're mentioning prioritizing growth, which means that if you are continuing to get better, challenging yourself, then more doors kind of open up along the way, which again from a sustainability perspective just gives you more opportunities. So that's really cool. >> Exactly. >> Cool. So tech lead, let's maybe for folks that are going to be listening and watching to this when we talk about someone who is uh say a junior developer, they move into senior and then we have this well we have team lead, we have tech lead, maybe you have different perspectives on what those mean. Would you be able to maybe share some perspective on on those titles from your experience and how they might differentiate from someone who is a mid-level or senior engineer so people can kind of get some understanding for the framing? Yeah. Um, so I'm going to give you my my take on it, but I can tell you it's definitely um like people have exactly as you said different um expectations and different definitions for a tech lead, a team lead. Um I think that only makes this role uh even more complex and more complicated to to tackle. Um so based on my experience and this is not just my personal experience on um on being a tech lead but also I've been training I think over 300 tech leads uh by by today in the past years and and give giving that what I've seen them being from different contexts from different companies from different cultures. Um I I came up with this kind of definition um that I think it it uh captures all different opinions which is the tech lead. It's a it's a software engineer that leads a technical team and it's accountable for the deliverables of of that team. And so I think that kind of sums sums up all of the different areas of misconceptions or like um definitions. Um it sometimes it overlaps with a team lead role. uh sometimes it's one only one role doing both right um I think uh what people often se the reason why people often separate the team lead and the tech lead is because they think about the tech lead just as as someone that is just taking part of the technical side someone very knowledgeable on the technical side and that it's guiding and helping the team grow in the technical area and they think about the team lead more on the people side like that it's helping people grow develop helps them build a growth plan, dealing with performance, dealing with performance reviews, like all of these different things. In my experience, it's really hard to have them separate, right? So, every time I I very rarely seen teams where you have both of these roles, I have to say that. But even when I've seen it, it takes a lot of work to make those boundaries clear because there's a lot of overlapping. And I also think uh as a tech lead, even if you're only focusing on the tech side, you still have to worry and care about all the other like people um people's side. And because and I think you're still accountable for it and it still impacts you even if it says so in your job description or not. And so I think this this is this is my take again. Um but uh this is this is what I I got to to realize and what I've seen it works best in in my experience. >> Okay. No, that makes sense. And I think yeah, I can I can definitely appreciate the the team lead versus tech lead, the overlap as you mentioned, having them coexist. It's not that it's impossible, but when we talk about the the roles and responsibilities, um there could be some some challenges and and like delineating like who is going to be responsible over what, right? um when we have roles like this what's I don't know a good way to necessarily say this but it's almost like if there isn't a clear responsibility for one person to own that it can make it kind of difficult that if you have overlap it's like well who is ultimately supposed to be responsible and again it's not that it cannot work it's just that you need to be very clear about ultimately who does have that accountability and responsibility >> yeah and this these two people need to work very well together be they need to align from the beginning on what what those expectations are and how they're going to work together so they don't step on each other to toes and to actually be productive together you know um so it and that requires constant and continuous um communication and trust between the two with their team clarity um so yeah I think it's it's just that it makes things um it makes definitely makes things doable and and they can be done it's just requires way more um engagement in in this process, let's say from both sides. >> Yeah. And you can imagine that someone who is another IC on the team, right? So they're they're working let's let's take the scenario where there's an IC and a team lead and a tech lead. if they're getting conflicting viewpoints from those individuals. Now, you have an IC that's like, I actually don't know what direction I'm supposed to move in on whatever they're being tasked with or whatever the challenge is in front of them because they literally have conflicting sort of perspective from two individuals and they're like someone's going to be unhappy about whatever I do going forward. So, yeah, that alignment is is critical. I mean that alignment um and and those problems can also appear also when there is no team lead like it's just the tech lead and other stakeholders like engineering managers or product managers or if there is no alignment between the leadership team the team would still have the same challenges and and try to figure out okay who do I follow who's right um like the leadership should should make sure they are aligned before they communicate anything to to the team uh in order to actually have the team efficient instead of going back and forward and like exactly you said worrying about okay who do I you know who do I listen to they should be focusing on exactly what it is needs to be worked on. >> Yeah and I I love that you mentioned that too because for myself as an engineering manager I don't have I have a couple of like we call them feature crews that are like smaller sub teams within the team that reports to me. So within some of the feature crews will have like a tech lead and >> uh so we don't have a team lead. We have myself as the engineering manager and some feature crews have a tech lead. And that dynamic that you just mentioned if I had tech leads that were not aligned or on the same page as me, then we could absolutely arrive at these situations where an IC is like someone's telling me this, you're telling me that. Um, so I need to make sure that when I'm working with my tech leads, like I try to give them um sort of constraints to work within, like, hey, if there's day-to-day stuff coming up, like there's a bug that comes up that's high priority and it's pretty clear that like you know how to prioritize that to get it fixed or you know smaller task that fits into a feature like please feel free to delegate like you know you have some room there. But when it comes to like um next steps in the planning or the the bigger scope of work like we probably need to sit down and get on the same page and uh that way it's not like what direction are we heading in and people have you know weird pull into different perspectives there but some of the day-to-day stuff like they have a little bit more sort of delegation power in that sense that's seem to be a decent balance from from what I've operated with. But any any thoughts on that? I mean, I think it's um it really depends on the context and what you shared. The only way to really know it's if you see it's working. Um and I I think that's that's where I would start, right? So, I think it's important to to you start from a structure that you think it can work, that you've seen work in this context before and you kind of develop from there. Um I think it's very important to constantly verify that um that that it works not just for you cuz it's like your gut feeling, but also for them. And that doesn't just mean, hey, does this work for you? Um, it means that like you create like this continuous feedback loops where you can get information um in different maybe even creating different ways to gather that input that it doesn't come with pressure or like in a oneonone. Um like I think that's the only way to really know if the process is working. It's if it all the parties um involved are are happy with it or at least you're seeing you're seeing results. And for that you need you need continuous uh input from from the people around you stakeholders and and teams and not just your gut feeling. Unfortunately our gut feeling the more people are involved it it can trick us. Um so at least to have that that validation but coming back to your point I mean for me sounds pretty pretty straightforward. Um it's it's really hard I think to as an engineering manager to keep that balance between like not overwhelming the tech leads but at the same time supporting them right like in regards to how much information you share how early um in in in my experience working with so many tech leads I think the more they know the better at any point like that doesn't mean just tech leads it just means the whole team um the more people are involved the more they know what's coming um I think it's um it just helps them to to to not fear to not be um like worried or feel overwhelmed or not knowing what's going to happen. But it's important that they are at the same time you combine that with alignment and clarity on what is it you know as a timeline based what is it that we're focusing on. So we're thinking about this but for the next three months this is what we're working on and that's where the tech lead the leadership comes in to kind of provide that clarity so the team can focus. Yeah, I love that because the I've had conversations before around like transparency in general, right? Like my I never I don't think in my entire career I've never had to like try and hide things from people that would feel like I feel like I would be very bad at that and like I wouldn't even know what to do. So, um I've always tried to lean into transparency and then the sort of the challenge with that ends up being like at at what point is it being helpful in being transparent versus that overwhelming like here's just like every bit of information flowing through like there's there's some things that like I I wouldn't tell people not because I'm trying to hide it. It's almost just like I don't want to overwhelm. And that way there's uh and I don't know the the right way that I measure this or the consistency around it, but there's situations where it's like I omit things and then if someone's like, "Hey, what about X?" And I go, "Hey, great that you brought it up and then I can share more about it." But at some point I have to like just not share everything, especially if I have multiple feature crews and some of that, you know, the some of the technical things we're doing don't seem as relevant. So yeah, I I really like that idea of like, you know, being transparent but not overwhelming. >> I think in regards to what you just said, uh what's very important to keep in mind and and and something that I work with constantly with with with tech leaders is that it's important for you to know what your style is. >> If you have a tendency to cuz people usually like go into the extreme. If you have a tendency to overshare, then you have to keep con consistently for yourself in check with the feedback, with seeing people reactions, with reflecting on how the conversation went, what impact did it had sharing that information so you can adjust. If you are on the other extreme which a lot of like micromanagers are or people that are struggling really hard with control and trust um where they basically hold back on on everything because it they're afraid on how people are going to react then that's the space where you need to explore a little bit the middle which is you start sharing you see how people react you kind of getting some trust so that's where I would start to kind of learning that adjustment because yes the the answer it's always in the middle uh so it's important to understand where you where you start um and and start exploring basically. >> Interesting. Yeah. And I and I like that what you said earlier this idea of if you're getting continuous feedback, right? Like you're trying to constantly measure, trying to evaluate. The nice thing is like when you start it might not be right and that's okay, right? Like you're going to try something you might say maybe it was an improvement, maybe it was a step back. Whatever you just tried is a step back. And at least you're going okay now we're measuring whatever that looks like. maybe even around your measurement and how you're observing things, maybe that needs to be improved. But if you're constantly looking at ways to improve by measuring, then I feel like ultimately that's going to converge on things getting better. >> Well, I like to think that any step forward, it's a step forward. Um, so I I don't really think you can we always say like we did a step back. Well, actually, even by running through something that it didn't really turn out the way you expected, it's also a step forward showing you that that doesn't work. >> So then you can move on to the next strategy. Right? So, and I'm saying this because a lot of the people that I work with in coaching, they are stuck at this point. Maybe if what if I do this, what if I do that? Where the problem is while you're stuck there, you're not actually doing anything and you still have the problem. Right. Right. >> Um so it's about encouraging people to just start somewhere. If there's no red flags, no nothing that you can come up with that would be a really big problem for them to take that strategy just start somewhere. But it's very important to be ac like accompanied by the process of reflection. So that's where I think actually growth happens the fastest when you don't just do things and in six months you look at I think it turned out well. But if you really want to improve a process or a skill, you continuously reflect, okay, this action or behavior that I change, did it had the impact that I was expected or not. So the the more you reflect, the faster you can incorporate it as a good or a bad strategy in your current context and and adapt. So I yeah, at least for me, this is this is how I see it. >> Yeah. No, that that makes a lot of sense, right? It's like, and I can appreciate that it's like a you you said it in your explanation, but it the change that you incorporate may not have had the outcome that you were expecting, but it's still something. It's still something you could learn from. And having that bias for action coupled with we're going to reflect is at least like it's moving things, right? And I think there's a lot of power in that because probably many of us have seen time and time again where it's like we're in a situation that we're not super excited about. There's something that we can improve. There's a challenge whatever it happens to be. And we can sit there going like well we don't know the perfect solution for it. We don't know this. We don't know that. And instead if we try something try something and go measure it. And then that way you can say okay like we learned something about it. maybe it's not the perfect thing. Either we keep going in this direction because we think we're on the right path or we try something else and at least keep trying to take steps forward. So, I think that's really powerful. >> I mean, if you're not trying anything, you still have the problem. It's just that you're not doing anything about it, right? I I I say this because every time I tell this to people, like we we do the whole process and every time we get to the same thing and they're like, "Okay, yeah, but if you don't want to do anything and you're not comfortable getting out of that comfort zone, then you're stuck here." That's why we started this whole conversation. Usually that's what it comes to and they're like, "Yeah, you're right. Okay, I'm I'm gonna go in and I'm I'm just going to go try with these things." It's important to understand where people are. So, this is why I always I'm very mindful of not giving people advice at least in the in the coaching session because it's very important for people to be responsible and for them to decide what they're willing to try at the point where they are >> because you are when you're giving advice, you're giving advice based on your experience on where you are at that point. But that might not work for for where people are. So I'm it's it's about constantly validating also as a as a leader working with tech leads, working with people in your team to validate that whatever it is that they're trying it's in their comfort zone and they're willing like it's their step forward, you know. >> Um and I find that a little bit sometimes hard mostly as leaders because you want people to to speed up. You you know where they want have to get, but the only way to actually see progress is to to meet them where they are and let them do their their own steps. So that's that's a key part of it. >> Yeah. I I think that's really cool because I I've talked about this a lot too. Even you can scale this to to different levels, right? If we scale it down to even like say someone who's more junior helping someone else that's junior uh or mid-level helping junior, right? You might be in a situation where you have the very junior person going to the person slightly more experienced saying, "I need help with this." And that slightly more experienced person goes, "Okay, here's the answer to it." Right? Here you go. And then if you keep doing that, it feels like you are helping that more junior person because they're getting their stuff done, right? Like both parties feel pretty good about it. The more junior person saying, "Hey, great. I'm unstuck." The more slightly more senior person is going, "Great. I've helped." But then if you keep doing this, what ends up happening is that it perpetuates this sort of reliance, right? Where over time that more junior person is going, "I'm getting the answers." And the slightly more experienced person is going, "Wait a second. Why? Like, why am I stuck constantly giving the answers? And if we scale this, it's kind of like you don't want to be in a leadership position where you're just telling everyone exactly what to do. Like that's not helping them grow. That's not getting diverse perspectives. Like it might seem like in the moment you're like, "Okay, I have a solution." And I think a lot of us with engineering mindsets are like, "There's a problem. Okay, like I want to come up with the solution. I want to solve this." But we have to practice holding back and being like, how do I guide someone through coming up with some solution, you know, some something that they want to try implementing so that it is their idea, they can try it out. I like that you said that it's like you're meeting them where they're comfortable to go try something. But I think ultimately that's going to be the thing that like they can have some ownership on. If I tell someone, "Go do it this way," they're gonna be like, "Well, that's what Nick said, so like I I'm doing it for Nick, not like I'm doing it because this is the thing that I'm gonna drive." >> Exactly. And as a leader, you don't want to have that on your shoulders. So I think coaching them through the process to and I said even if you are going to give them an idea or a suggestion or it's very important to always say look my take or some how somehow how you can run it but always make sure that you align with them that they take the final like say on okay I'm going to try this I'm going to see how it works I'm going to run with it I'm I'm going to evaluate the reflect on the process at the end of the day they are the ones doing it. I think that the problem comes in in regards to what you said to the short-term versus long-term game, right? Because the the micromanagement I tell you what to do is the short-term game. I get my problem fixed. The problem is, as we all know, and that's why we're so focusing on these others ways of of growing and and supporting people is that we know in the long term it doesn't work. It's not scalable. And and that's where the business side comes in. It's just not scalable. you're one person and at some point it's it's going to be impossible for you to manage everything and your team is going to be stuck and they're going to depend on you. So the the mess just keeps scaling, >> right? >> Let's let's put it like that. So I think that's when people start exploring the other strategies because once you see the pain, you know, you you want things differently. It just takes a little bit more time. >> Yeah. And it's it's truly is because it's like short versus long term, right? you if you're in a position where you're like this feels uncomfortable because we're dealing with challenges or problems, there's live sight issues, it could be anything, right? If we just give the solution, the problem goes away, it's fast, it's like that's okay, we're unblocked, let's keep going. But um yeah, when you start to realize over time, but that's not scaling, then it it almost becomes pretty obvious like that's not the solution. Like there there has to be something better. Uh and I think that uh a lot of the time giving people autonomy and ownership over solving those things and like you as leaders like you kind of guide people push them in a direction to let them know like hey you you can have decision-m power over this you can take something and own it. Um you know I'll be there to support you. Uh you creating environments where it's like safe to fail. Um I know some people don't like the f word but um yeah like just you know creating that environment where people are like okay I know that um given like what my leadership is saying what my manager is saying that I am empowered to go try this right I am empowered to take some responsibility on this and you know because they trust me if it's not perfect or doesn't work out exactly as expected no one's going to come chase me down and like yell at me it's like you know we'll reflect on it my leader leadership has demonstrated they do the same thing if they make mistakes or things don't work out well. Um, so I think yeah, creating environments like that is like another contributing factor to to the success of that. >> But it's the base of everything, right? I think we're talking here about psychological safety and having the >> the the like the perfect or at least the setup environment for people to collaborate, work together, and and grow. um which is like you describe it's it's hard to to get to but it only gets built through to to building that trust and continuously uh creating that that safe space for for people. That means embracing failure and making it part of your of your day-to-day process like removing blame and and and uh helping people see that like supporting them even when things go wrong. I think that's I actually think that's when how leaders build character like and how they prove their character. It's when things go wrong because when things go well, you know, everybody can be happy and share. Exactly. But when when things actually and they have other stakeholders in your back screaming at you or and you have to protect the team and that's where things become a little bit tricky. So I think that's where you where you have to hold your ground and actually um stand up for for what you're preaching. >> Yeah, I love that. I think that's awesome. I wanted to to ask I know we probably want to talk about some career development and I was curious from and you might have a different take on this or how you how you want to maybe navigate it but going from something like a I would imagine someone like a senior software developer is sort of on track to if they're based on their interest their skill and obviously this is going to depend where they're working to but they're probably the best set up to go into something That's like a tech lead position. And I realized too that sometimes something like a tech lead is not like a formal role or like you're not necessarily always like promoted into the tech lead role like where your title changes and at your company. But I was curious like someone who is a senior software developer and they're interested in kind of going down this path into to being a tech lead like could you talk about what that might look like, the things they should be focused on or how they approach like how do I take that step? Yeah, I mean um one one of the things that I I work with um on with people it's doing this transition from like individual contributor from senior developer to to tech lead. So I um I can definitely tell you a couple of things about that. Um so the first thing I think it's important the moment when you have clarity that you want to go in that direction is important to understand why why you are doing it for is it because I mean and people do like you mentioned before is it because the salary raise is it because the title is it because you want to grow and help people which is mostly the answer 99% of the people um go is it because um you think you can do a better job than your current tech lead and you you just you know you want to put yourself out there. So, it's very important for you to discover your why and be honest on what that why is. The reason that I'm saying this is because sometimes there might be different ways for you to meet meet that goal which doesn't necessarily requires you to put in a position which you might not necessarily want to do. So getting your why behind the decision is first thing. Second, when you have clarity, whatever is the reasoning, it's about starting to work in that direction. And the way to do it will you get clarity on what are the things the task the sorry the skills that I need to develop in order to to get there. >> Okay. >> A simplest way to do this is to just take the job description for the teched role in your current company. The simplest way and go through the expectations and start assessing yourself. What am I doing? What am I not? Why? What is it missing? Build a grow plan. >> Doing it honestly, right? Because I think sometimes people could be like, "I could do that. I could that one too." Sure. But it's like if that's what your job is every day, do you genuinely feel that or are you just trying to, >> you know, make yourself feel better? >> I hear you. But I also think I mean that's at least a starting point. What I'm saying is that a lot of times you don't even know >> you're not as good or you don't want to do the things until you do the things. So at least with the motivation of yeah, I can do this. It's something you can work with. than people that really struggles to to position theel in that position and they they I really believe they hold themselves back because you know it takes a leap. >> Would you recommend that when people go through that exercise that they evaluate themselves like where their strengths are and then sort of the areas where they're like that one I I might need to go like spend some more time on skilling up on that or getting some of the experience so that they understand like where their energy has to go. >> So I mean my process it's like a scaling system. >> Okay. We I I like going through each indiv individual expectation and scaling yourself from one to 10. It's not about the number. It's about understanding, okay, if you're a five, why you're a five >> and then understanding what is it missing for you >> to be a 10. >> And that's it's just a way to kind of build that helping you focus in the area of what is it that I have, what proves that that I'm good in this area and what is it that I'm missing. So it it brings brings the right mindset for that growth. So that's how you find out things that you need to work on. And now comes the very key part in regards to what you said. How do you know um you want to do this? How do you know you're focusing on the right thing? You validate that with people around. Very important your manager. If you want to grow into a tech lead role and I mean that's some in some company it's not a promotion but in most company it is. Um you have to validate that with a person that is going to say yes or no is going to advocate for you going in that position. So next part is you going with this assessment to your manager and asking them to do the same assessment for you. Then putting this together seeing the overlap seeing the gaps or what you might have missed and align with them on what it means. >> Right? So that's how you know you're going in the right direction because very often as you see there's so many uh so many misunderstandings when it comes to the tech lead role that you also have your own assumptions based on other tech leads you've seen based on whatever you read. At the end of the day, the source of truth is whatever you agree with your manager that you need to work on, right? You can have a conversation about I don't agree with these expectations wherever that's open to be to have it there. Right? But it comes back to having that clarity on what is it that I need to work on and very important how will I know that I get there because a lot of job descriptions these days they are very have an impact at the company level. What does that mean? And so that's on you to actually define what do you think that means and going to your manager and say look I want to do this workshop this whatever this presentation will this help me grow in this area will this check the box but it's this continuous process of validation and checking that you're on the right track >> and I'm saying this because a lot of people just do things and they assume they are doing the right things and in six months their manager like no well that's we don't expect that from you that's not what we consider impact at the at the company level and people are disappointed and you have to go back to the board and so this these are the in in my for growing in any in any role you want to grow this is usually the process that I that I take with people but it's constantly checking and verifying progress and reflecting until you get to that point at least it gives you a space where um you can challenge people you know and say look okay you you say I'm not there yet because a lot of time you get you're I feel like you're not there yet. What does that mean? >> Yeah. >> If you cannot justify it, you know, you have to have resources to to challenge people on okay, what is it that I'm missing? Give me an example where you think my communication wasn't up to the standards. I want to know, you know, I want to improve. So, you have to help people help you basically. And I I can really appreciate that too because like as a manager uh and I've seen whether I've seen other managers not necessarily my own or historically even for my own managers when you're in this spot of like um it's easy to say like oh just keep doing what you're doing or it's easy to say like oh not yet but like why what's the justification? What's the rationale? Um I the way that you talked about kind of doing the the self analysis and then bringing that to your manager to do the same thing is like almost word for word exactly what I do with my employees. Um you're talking about going from senior to tech lead, let's say, and going through the job description. But the the only literally the only difference with what you described versus what I do with my employees is um we have like a like a talent guide or a rubric for you know lack of better word and it talks about the levels that people are at the skill sets the expectations and I literally say we do this a couple of times a year at a minimum and I'll say go through it like we've had this conversation before but you go through it kind of you know rate yourself come up with examples of these things either for where you feel like you're you might be lacking or things where you're like this project or this this interaction whatever it happens to be like kind of backs up this uh this example um go through that write your notes and then I will do the same thing we come together and we talk about it and I always remind them like my goal with that conversation is not to be like and look and that's why my side is the right side and you know you just wasted your time doing this. It's really just about level setting the expectations. I remind people that I would love to have full visibility into absolutely everything that everyone's doing. There's always going to be stuff I miss. So that's why it's really important that they have some of their perspective coming in. Um or this this idea of someone saying, "Hey, I worked on this project. Doesn't that demonstrate, you know, this thing here?" And when we can have that conversation of like actually no or actually that actually um you know ties into this other skill set and just having that alignment where we can say now we're on the same page um you know if we leave that conversation we should have things that you need to work on still or there's times where I'm like and we feel like together like you're checking all the boxes for the next level. So, you know, without me promising anyone a promotion, it's like you should feel pretty good that you're on the right track for promotion cycle that this would be coming up. Uh ultimately, just trying to remove surprises because like you said, the the worst thing is when you don't have these interactions, you meet up in 6 months or 12 months feeling like I've been doing all the right things just to have this terrible surprise of like, no, that's not it at all. And so many people do even today like um it's it's just it it happens like everybody seems to know the theory but I mean it's not easy to apply it. It takes a lot of work intentional work. I always tell people like growth comes with intentional work and intentional means you do the preparation you do the assessment. You do the reflection you do the check-in. you show up for the one-on- ones with your manager, which I never understand when people say, "I have nothing to talk about with my manager in my oneonone's." And I'm like, "What about your growth? What about feedback? What about what you want? What about what you're struggling with?" That's what they there for, right? To support you. And yeah, so um it's just that uh hopefully through through this and to keep saying it out loud and coming from different perspective and different uh people people are going to finally incorporate it and and use it in their in to speed up their growth and development. >> Yeah, I think that's that's spot on. It's I I even like I kind of struggle and maybe this is more maybe it's more common at startups. worked at startups and you know 101's not being a consistent thing like I can I can get that to some degree depending on the life cycle of the startup if you're just like look like we're just literally trying to survive and if we have to miss a one-on-one sorry but like um but at some point when things start to scale like that stuff's got to be pretty consistent um and making sure that at least there's a feedback loop right maybe maybe you're one day shifts or something but at least having some type of you know, consistent feedback loop. But, um, yeah, like if you're I always tell people if you're not having one-on- ones, like step one is like have the conversation to to talk to your manager like what can we do to get something consistent? If it's if you can't do every week because that's too much or something and can we do every two weeks? If you can't even do every two weeks, like what's what's the thing that we can commit to to get that in place? Um, get something right now. you have something in place, take advantage of that. Right? If you're uh I I say too like if you're doing a status update, I'm not I know people will say like no status updates and 101 ones. I'm like I don't think it's the best use of time, but like if that's what your jump off point is, I'm like I'm okay with it, but I always remind people if that's the only thing you're talking about, I will start interjecting and saying, "Okay, like maybe we should be talking about these other things." So, in your next oneonone, let's make sure we can have time for career growth or more dedicated feedback and that kind of stuff. But, um, yeah, I think like the career growth stuff, it's uh I' I've been pretty fortunate that I have a lot of people that that do want to talk about that. So, that's nice that uh people seem to be pretty like self-motivated to bring it up. But yeah, I I I know I've talked to a lot of people that are like, I just don't know what to talk about in a 101. It's like, >> well, I have a whole chapter in my in my upcoming book in in for tech leads about this just coming up with topics on 101. So hopefully no one will run out of it. >> And when when is the book planned? Oh, and maybe do you have a a release date planned? >> Yeah, end of the year. >> Awesome. That's that's super exciting. So yeah, I mean, but like you know, if you're writing a whole chapter on it, then like yes, it's definitely an important thing. >> I mean, it's like you said, I think it's one of the first things. I'm focusing on on tech leads in my book, but I think it's one of the first thing as a leader u you need to do. Setting up those 101 ones is it's it's about building trust. It's about building a consistent channel of communication with your team members. Whatever you decide to do later, if it's feedback, if it's update, if it's questions, if it's complaining, if it's talking about your kids and dogs, whatever it is, it's an opportunity for you to build trust. >> Yeah. >> What very often happens, like you said, and I've worked with startups also and or people even if not in startups that are not doing the one-on- ones consistently, leaders, is that they very often they tell me, "Yeah, I will just do oneonone when I feel like it or when we need it." The problem is that when you need it, it's already too late. >> Yeah. >> And that's the like people would know when you schedule that oneonone that we have something to talk about. >> So it's a problem already, right? And it's already escalating. You already have to deal with it. >> Yeah. >> When it's you have them consistently, you can identify if it's a risk before it becomes big. You can see the red flags. You can hear the complaints. You can kind of, you know, jump in earlier. So, it gives you an opportunity and the other person to not get to a big thing, let's say. I I really think it helps a lot with avoiding big thing escalating or conflict that it doesn't necessarily have to get there. >> Yeah. And that's a that's a really interesting point, right? Because uh if your if your 101's are always leveraged that way, it's almost like you know that every time you have one, it's going to be something that's probably comfortable. Um, and like when I do one-on- ones with people or like, you know, if I'm joining a new team, whatever it happens to be, I remind people like if we're doing weekly one-on-ones, if we finish our oneonone and as soon as we're finished, if you're like, oh yeah, I had this really important thing for Nick or it's the next day and you're like, I'm stuck on something. I need to talk about something. I'm like, please don't wait for next week's 101. Just message me. just like, you know, a open door policy kind of thing because what I don't want to have happen is that people wait for their 101 to pile on problems. Like if that's the spot where they feel comfortable, that's totally fine, but I just want to make sure that they feel as comfortable as possible at any point to say, "I need to talk about this." >> But that's in the next level. That's on top of the one ones. What most tech leads or tech leaders do that are not doing the one on is they say well they just do that my door it's always open I just tell them to show up to me and tell me well that doesn't just happen you have to build the trust so if you have the one ones at least at least that's a starting point for people to oh I have this oneonone I can prepare to bring you the topics >> it's way harder you create an opportunity if you have that trust already I actually think it might be easier for you to maybe somehow remove the reduce the frequency where as you already have built that trust and people know that they can reach out to you and you already have that constant communication but if you're from the beginning yeah I'm an open book ask me anything that never happens when did this work and people still use it you know >> yeah it's such a good point when I joined so I switched teams just over a year ago now and you know from the first day kind of telling people the same idea hey door is always open but you know we're having one-on ones every week And I think I don't know how long it took months. It must have been months, but like getting to the point where you know I am I have to earn the trust and the the respect of the people on the team. I can't show up and expect it or command it. You have to put in the time and the effort and make sure that people understand like you know that you're working at this to be able to support them. And then after doing it now I will have people that will regularly outside of oneonone say hey like can you know it could be a could be a family thing it could be it's you know interpersonal conflict at work anything and they will approach me outside of one-on- ones and for me that's a nice it's a nice sign like obviously I don't I don't like when people have challenges no one wants problems but um it's a nice sign that they trust me that they they can come to me and they're not like okay crap like I'm I just going to wait till the 101 because I feel like I'm forced into like, you know, this this conversation. It's like, no, Nick said that he's going to be there and he's kind of he has proven it. So, I can lean into that. So, that is a nice sign. >> Perfect example to to my point. I love it. >> Yeah, that's great. Um, okay. So on career progression uh and maybe maybe transitioning to soft skills because I was curious like I and I don't know if you have the same perspective on this or not but uh I have felt like uh maybe for more junior developers um that kind of getting started in in software development I don't want to say that you don't need soft skills I think that you always do but I feel like maybe the opportunity to to lean into your soft skills seems like it comes up less and I feel like I see people really hyperfocus on their technical stuff and just being able to prove their technical excellence and then they as they're getting promoted it's almost like if they neglect the soft skills they start to reach this like this like a ceiling almost where they're like why am I stuck here and often I'm not saying it's the only reason but I often find that people are like they haven't invested into soft skills and I was curious ious if um well it's curious if you have like a similar observation or in general how you see soft skills kind of tying into software engineering. I mean I think at the end of the day like whatever we're building as as software engineers um we we want it to have impact and that means um actually having an impact on the people around us on our users on whatever on the people we work with and that means um being able like having soft skills to to to get there. Um the reason that I'm I'm saying this I think it's soft skills are required at any level on any stage of your career. Well, more than required, I would say they definitely can help you a lot. Even as a junior, just think about how useful it can be for you to know how to ask the right questions at the right time, how to ask for help, how to have this one-on- ones with your manager that we just talked about. >> All of this requires >> soft skills. That's what we've been talking about, right? making your work visible, growing, developing, having the right conversation, the right communication, the right sending the right message. All of this it's soft skills. It's working with people. It's um it's it's it's dealing with collaboration. So, I believe that um it it can only help you speed up your growth at least in the career space. The reason that I'm saying this is because um I even seen a lot of developers growing faster at least through the levels, right? Like moving to middle, moving to senior because um they just had bigger impact. They because they're able to collaborate easier with people because like I said, they're easy. They are more open to fail faster and to deal with with problems and to help others to grow like you were saying with everyone has someone to teach someone else. um by just not being afraid of jumping in, leading a conversation, taking more ownership and that's always visible. People see that, right? And at the end of the day, as as we much as we want to to accept it or not, when it comes to who do we get promoted, who do we it it always comes back to to the person that proves the best their work, right? It's more not than just does the the one that does the work to also the ones that is able to uh to make it visible and through through this type of impact and through these soft skills you make that work visible. People see you you're there and you have impact way more than just on your task. So I think they're valuable at any stage um of growth. Now that being said, I do agree with you that when you're starting out um as a software engineer um it's it it's just about focus. So you might want and you might be focusing more on your technical skills because you need to get that traction, right? You need to and you're also motivated in the beginning to see things moving. You want to learn, you want to um and so you you might not just be at focus. You get better at what you focus on, right? So it's just a matter of of being more involved in the technical side in in the beginning. But the moment you want to grow the moment even from a junior from a a middle or people are always going to bring up that topic your communication is like this like you're okay you're really good at writing code and solving problems but people cannot work with you or like it it always comes up in in in those kind of situation and I can tell you that because everyone that that I work that approaches me it's it's just that they don't come to me I want to have better soft skills they come to me I cannot grow I'm stuck I'm getting bad feedback right that's the problem that that we're solving to developing the soft skills. So, and I think the more you grow in your career, the more it escalates because the better soft skills you have, the impact it's way more visible, right? This is not just you with your tech lead saying the wrong thing. This is you with a whole team of engineers with experience maybe, you know, um having different type of conversations with clients with you have a different type of exposure. And so that's even more visible how you deal with people. Let's put it like that. So, that's that's my take on it. >> No, that's that's awesome. The uh there was I'm gonna butcher this and I wish that I had it like written down or something, but I I don't know if it was on LinkedIn or somewhere, but someone had written what I thought was a very clever way of framing this. And they were essentially saying something along the lines of you might have like the best technical skills, right? You might have outstanding technical skills, but your your soft skills are going to be like again I'm going to butcher it, but like they become the limiting factor. So if your soft skills are not outpacing your technical skills, um that will be the limiting factor regardless of how technical you are. So I think ultimately Oh, go ahead. I wanted to say even technically at some point you cannot grow anymore or to the level to have the impact that you want because people maybe you just they don't want to work with you there's going to stop you from getting the job from getting the promotion from working on that project that really want to work with because you you cannot right so you're at some point you even to to reach the technical to do the technical side that you want you're still going to have to to develop those skills because again you're working with people the users are people, the clients are people, the your team, it's all about uh people. And even in now, we are in the area of AI and you're going to say, "Okay, yeah, but we're just going to write code. We're going to tell AI to write code." I think soft skills are even more needed than ever. I I was seeing the other day, I don't know if you see the Firebase Studio. Uh >> yeah, I haven't used it, but I I saw it. Yes. So um what what's interesting about it is that you basically it's a it's a tool that allows like non-coding people with non tech experience to build the website. It does the deployment. It does everything for you. You just have to tell it what to do. >> Sure. >> I have a friend in marketing that tried it and he was like this is really hard. I have to think about a lot of things and I I really thought my communication skills were good but talking to this thing it was really hard. And so it's about think about from the perspective of you as an engineer explaining even if you're going to work with tool you still with the tool you're still going to have to be able to explain to people to AI whatever it is that you want and how you want it and and so it it's I think it's only going to be more and more needed. I I had a I'm not going to remember the specifics, but I had this really interesting like personal example of using, you know, chat GPT as like a a coding buddy. We're going back and forth designing stuff and I I remember that I asked it to go build something. So, I was like, "Hey, like go design it this way." Gave it some gave it some specs and I remember being like frust like it did a pretty good job, but I remember being frustrated like why the heck did it do this right? Like I'm like that seems so silly. And then I was thinking about it and I'm like to be fair I never gave it any detail about that particular part. So I was getting frustrated that it built something that did mostly what I expected. But I legitimately did not communicate specifics around this thing. It picked something. I did it. This will work. And it's not wrong it would work. But because in my communication to it, I was not, you know, um I h it's funny like you have to think about your audience. In this case, my audience is a robot. So, okay. Um I I do need to have some more specifics around what I'm trying to do. But this kind of thing comes up with people, right? We have this all the time where it's like, "Hey, go design this. Go build this. Go do this feature." Someone's nodding. Yep. Okay. I can do that. But if there's no communication back and forth and alignment and kind of getting on the same page, you might have, you know, you have someone go off and design and build something for a month and they come back and you're like, "Wait a second. What about this or what about that? Oh, we didn't talk about those things." It's like it's the exact same thing. It's like it comes back to communicating. So ironic >> explicitly to your audience. Exactly. That's why I'm saying I think the problem just get becomes bigger. So yeah, that's where we are. >> Yeah. And I I really appreciated to the idea um impact and communication, right? So, uh just to go back to the the junior versus like as you're growing in your career. So fully agree and I I love that you called out like even how to ask questions as a junior and getting the help you need like that soft skills super important. I think the part that I was hinting at that that you really nailed down was like as you're becoming more senior and that that greater impact is expected and required for you to grow, it's it's almost impossible to do if you're not getting other people on board and building with them. So, um I think that when you're more a junior because those opportunities come up less, it's not an expectation that you're doing like crossf functional stuff like you can kind of scope it down. Like it it's almost like you can dodge it a little bit, but at some point like it just becomes such a limiting factor that you cannot deliver such impact without getting you know uh other people, other teams and stuff involved to to deliver bigger better things. So, um yeah, that's super cool. Um, okay. I wanted to ask, um, just to wrap things up, I know you mentioned book coming out at the end of the year. Uh, do you have a title for it and everything picked yet or is that still TBD? >> Yes, it it's already I mean the first chapters are already released on the O'Reilly platform. It's called Leveling Up as a as a tech lead. Um and it's basically tackles this gap in I think we have in the market on doing this transition from a very technical role senior engineer to the your first leadership role which is usually a tech lead team lead. So all of the things that we talked about um today about okay what do should I focus on starting with one-on- ones the skills do you need to develop what do you need to care about in order to to start managing people it's all there >> awesome and then as you mentioned the full version will be released hopefully by the end of this year >> yes it's coming out every month it's there's a new chapter being released it's already available and the full version in also in format is going to be there that's awesome >> totally fine don't worry So people can go onto the O'Reilly platform right now and they can start. Oh, that's so cool. >> I didn't know >> the whole topic on 101 was just released. So >> awesome. Okay, so people can go follow up on that. That's great. And I will I'll I'll bother you afterwards for links and stuff like that. But uh with that said, I just wanted to ask too if people want to reach out to you, read more about what you have going on. Uh could you can you share with us like where people can find you? And like I said, I'll get links and stuff after, but >> Sure. LinkedIn, that's where I am all day long. So, any questions you have, any comments, I'm there. I'm posting, I'm engaging, uh, following up with your content and with so many people on fellow creators. So, I'm I'm there. That's where you find me on LinkedIn. You'll find all the updates on the book, on the course, on whatever I'm doing. It's it's there. >> Perfect. Okay. Well, that's awesome. Oh, I wanted to say thanks again. I really appreciate your time. Uh, the insights you're sharing. I think it's super helpful. I think that this kind of stuff comes up all the time. Um whether people have these questions, you know, uh explicitly or they're just like I'm feeling kind of stuck and like I don't know exactly like how to progress. I think this comes up all the time. So this is super helpful. >> Was a pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversations and thank you so much for the inviting. >> Awesome. Okay. Thank you.