Suggestions to work with an unresponsive tech lead
Posted by firelice@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 21 comments
Context: 6 yoe, faang exp, senior title, current company 2 years.
I joined two years ago, but the current experience has been interesting to say the least. My tech lead doesn't do anything? Often, the engineers he manages will be discussing architecture via Slack or Teams he never once steps in to give his input. PRs will never be looked at by him or will he write code. Often major incidents spawn over the very little code he pushes after at best consulting one other person or just bypassing branch rules.
He will be directly @'d in Slack threads discussing technology or timelines around specific projects he manages and not answer until another engineer steps in to answer.
We will have major timelines and events about systems we manage not be given too us until a week before it's supposed to happen resulting in major crunch. Literally, he knew I would be gone for a week in July for my wedding and in the Retro he mentioned PTO events causing delays.
For example, he told his management that a project would be done in two months despite not even techplanning it or discussing it at all with his engineers. That project ended up taking over two years(just launched in prod).
What is a tech lead's role if not decisions about architecture, code review input, or even timelines and project timelines? I am often ghosted or have to ping multiple times a day for even a one word answer.
Like I understand life happens, he had a kid a couple years ago that is taking up a lot of time, but we need someone to lead our team or like talk to his team. There will be days I just see him at standup, I spy on his calendar and that's his only thing in it.
positivelymonkey@reddit
> For example, he told his management that a project would be done in two months despite not even techplanning it or discussing it at all with his engineers. That project ended up taking over two years(just launched in prod).
Management let a 2 month project overrun by 22+ months? I don't know what your lead is doing with his free time but I don't blame him.
firelice@reddit (OP)
Tbh management was more or less receptive of the timeline after being introduced with the real complexity and time commitment. But still the fact he originally gave such a shit estimate sucked for all of us
lab-gone-wrong@reddit
I think the better point is that he's following incentives laid by management. He isn't the problem. Management would argue there isn't a problem, since launching 22 months late apparently wasn't a problem. Complaining about him won't fix it. Replacing him won't either.
Formal-Way8889@reddit
I'd say they are probably busy fighting fires with management and is too busy to pick up anything. Pushing code quickly suggest demand from management and them trying to keep them happy. This is confirmed by your second point talking about time lines.
I think this might be a management problem in all honestly and it's probably worn the lead down to the point they don't care.
broken-neurons@reddit
This would be my job. I went from a highly effective staff engineer to TL and have now ended up shielding my team constantly and fighting for resources and head count. I spend all my time in meetings with the higher ups and haven’t actively worked on a ticket for over a year. I check through PR’s now and then and try and keep us from building too much tech debt, whilst management push delivery dates on us and I cut scope with my PO in order to deliver on time. I spend too much of my time networking with the right people in the organization, who can make things happen, and avoiding the people who block the team from getting the work done. I came to the conclusion that the one person in the team that fucks our DORA metrics and velocity in general was me, because I’d constantly be pulled away from development midway through a ticket and block the rest of the team. I had no choice but to leave the active development to my engineers and trust them to do what they are good at. I do however keep an eye out and trial software products and services that could help the team in the future, since it’s much less a blocking task.
NickelLess83@reddit
Are you me?!? This resonates deeply. Especially the bit about having to stop doing actual dev work.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
A couple possibilities:
He's quietly fighting battles you don't see all day, dealing with management, sitting in meetings, and shielding the team from all of that noise. Not the typical job of a tech lead, but it happens. To be honest, I don't see this in your post, but keep the possibility in the back of your mind.
He's quiet quitting. This is exactly what it looks like when someone in a lead position checks out and hopes to coast for a couple years before anyone realizes they're not working. If he's responsive to his boss and management, but lazy with his own reports, he's just maintaining appearances.
firelice@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the good advice. More context!
No he is my direct as of now. Our team has a bad rep, I believe, from the company. Largely, in my opinion, because of him. We give aggressive timelines, and the team doesn't even know what the timelines are until it's too late or someone says it in passing. Or he will promise things, not inform the engineers. We get paged about it or have to develop new functionality against the new thing(that it wasn't designed to do). So yes, I am scared about layoffs especially because we just got reorged.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
This is exactly what I was trying to warn about in the second half of my comment.
If I was in your position, I would be working on changing teams as quickly as possible.
firelice@reddit (OP)
Honestly, I have a couple final rounds coming up that I may consider more deeply, even if it's not a huge increase in $ or a title bump.
Thanks! I have never been in this position before it's hard to drive work when we don't even know the expectations.
BeenThere11@reddit
Your team lead had quiet quitted
Good decision to leave. A company who didn't detect this is bad news
CoolNefariousness865@reddit
Id tread carefully raising this to your direct manager. I'm in a similar situation as OP, but our TL is very friendly with our direct. Slippery slope.. so I'm just upskilling and looking for an internal move come the new year..
charging_chinchilla@reddit
Don't rule out the possibility that he's going through some shit outside of work that has drained his motivation to work (e.g. divorce, death/illness in the family, etc).
That being said, he clearly needs to go. Do you have regular syncs with his boss? If so, I would bring up your concerns with them.
thisismyfavoritename@reddit
that sounds like a guy that stayed at the company for a while and failed upwards.
Other people are giving him too much credit, id be willing to bet hes dead weight, but im biased because im in a somewhat similar situation. Good luck!
MrEloi@reddit
I'm of the view that Tech Lead is a sort of assessment test prior to being promoted to real management.
This person is failing that test.
Senior management will at some point resolve the situation ... I hope!
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
Ewwww I am a tech lead… I don’t want to be a manager! I don’t even want to be a tech lead 😂
ings0c@reddit
No one wants to be a tech lead
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
Your name is wild… I am reading 1984 for the first time at the moment. What are the chances
Aggressive_Ad_5454@reddit
You could ask him, without confrontation if you can, what's going on with him. "You must be fighting a lot of fires for our team" is something you could say.
This is an obvious opportunity for you to take on some decision-making responsibility.
If there's a decision needing making at the tech lead pay grade on Slack, you can say "let's do thus-and-so because good reason. You should compose these Slack messages in Notepad or something so you get your whole reasoning posted for consideration at once. Bad idea to make your suggestion without also showing the reasoning.
You'll either get him to step up, or let you step up. After a few rounds of this, if it succeeds, ask him directly, in person, to let you participate in more planning.
firelice@reddit (OP)
I honestly do make most of the decisions. The problem is, we often have promises that our TL has made to his manager that we don't know about or timelines about a project that we don't know about. It's hard to make good decisions without any of this information. And it makes us look horrible when it's not delivered.
ao_makse@reddit
That guy won the game