Tech leads who enjoy your work, how do you maintain the balance to maximize happiness?

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amitkumar88251@reddit

Balancing happiness as a tech lead is all about focus and intentional choices. The 10 Best Tech Leaders from Asia 2026, featured in TradeFlock Magazine, show that loving your work comes from aligning responsibility with purpose, empowering your team, and protecting time for growth and creativity.

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No_Technician7058@reddit

i am similar to you. at some point i realized i needed to stop thinking about optimizing things for the business, and started optimizing things for my WLB. if i flame out then thats bad for everyone is how i justify it.

first i made changes to really strip down the amount of stuff i wasnt finding effective and was draining me. i cancelled all reoccurring meetings outside of one on ones, and removed myself from meetings i did not want to attend.

i gave myself more coding and code review time as i find that work rejuvenates me and its what im good at.

i delegated different products to different people and left them to do their best to solve those problems.

i involve myself in the big, permanent decisions and act as guardrails to avoid any pitfall decisions.

if its a day where i can feel im burning out i log off early, go for a walk, stretch, work out, whatever.

i find thinking in terms of "what could make this better for me?" has helped a lot.

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adh1003@reddit

I can't comment on my own work ethic or why I've ended up in lead positions a few times now, but what I would say is:

I kinda like mentoring
Architecture is the highest I'd want to go
I'm absolutely not cut out for management
Accepting a promotion to CTO in a recent job a couple of years ago was a big mistake and I'll never work in that role again unless I've no other option

If you've ended up working as a developer because you like writing code and not because of the paycheck (in which case I think you might be one of an increasingly rare breed, but I'm glad you're around!) then you'll probably find that the happiest you can be is - developing.

Live within your means and plan for a future within the ceiling that the career provides - honestly, you won't get any rewards in the long run for working your ass off for someone else doing crap you don't like in the misguided belief of capitalism's greatest lie that "if you just work hard enough, you can achieve anything!".

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rfbp@reddit

Would you mind sharing what made you feel like the CTO role was a big mistake?

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adh1003@reddit

It involved man management, IT support BS, lots of spreadsheets and so-on. And the workload - small company - went off the charts.

A "pure" CTO in some huge company is probably a load of bullshit management from someone who knows almost jack about actual software dev. But I'm not in the large corporate space and sincerely hope never to be.

So instead of writing code, which I'm good at, I was just faffing with IT and some vague idea of steering future architecture-maybe (but really, the decisions made by Product would drive a bus through any of that). It was a waste of what I can do, but pushed me at times into man management or HR style moments which I am absolutely not suited for.

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rfbp@reddit

That makes sense. Thank you for sharing!

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martabakTelor6250@reddit

but.. CTO role has a lot of money in it, right?

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Scarface74@reddit

Just like every other position in tech, the amount you get paid is a combination of title and company.

A “CTO” at an enterprise startup is going to probably make less than a mid level employee at BigTech

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ched_21h@reddit

Also it usually has:

- a lot of "politics"

- a lot of public speaking and "selling" the ideas and responsibilities to people

- a lot of management

- a lot of responsibility for something you do not have control on

- a need to stick to the budget which is always lower that the work that should be done for this budget

- a small piece of work where you actually have to write code / build architecture / work with technologies

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mcxvzi@reddit

If you are good CTO and stay in the role for a while, yeah

But that's usually not worth it, as a good developer makes good enough money to live a happy life

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someGuyyya@reddit

you like writing code and not because of the paycheck (in which case I think you might be one of an increasingly rare breed

I didn't know I was a rare bread!

I have no interest in going from IC to tech lead/management.

Programming and solving technical problems is definitely the part of work I love the most and gives the least stress.

I like work being fairly predictable so that I can have the energy to enjoy my time outside of work.

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chazmusst@reddit

> might be one of an increasingly rare breed

I'm one of these. I remember graduating from my computer science BSc and being shocked at how well paid and easy to get the graduate web dev jobs were. Got super lucky and didn't realise it would be life on easy mode

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funbike@reddit

Back off on IC work.
Instead of code reviewing every line of code, review the reviews. Make sure ICs are doing high quality code reviews.
Eliminate QA. Require ICs provide tests for all use-cases and edge cases. Make code coverage review a part of code review.
Delegate as much as you can to the team.
TL and PO should not be same person. They have conflicting interests. Get someone on the business side to be part-time PO.
FIFO. Just do what you can do. Make a to-do list. Stop context switching. Don't do overtime. If management wants more, tell them that's all there is with current resources.
Use tools to manage workflow and stop being manual. Get a good ticketing system and implement a good status workflow.

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ppepperrpott@reddit

Review reviews, I like that, cheers

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RPJWeez@reddit

For me it was learning effective delegation. I have smart people on my team that can handle things I don’t necessarily need to be in the weeds on. Prioritize and delegate helps keep balance.

I’m also learning how to determine which meetings I actually need to be in, and politely declining the others.

Most of my day to day is planning the technology behind long term roadmaps, improving dev experience for my teams, prototyping, and helping with things that are blocking the teams.

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rocketpastsix@reddit

Well first you have to not do all those roles. Don’t fill roles because there is no one in those roles. That’s not your responsibility. The company needs to do that. If you stop QA’ing and something breaks then that’s on the company, not you

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casualfinderbot@reddit

If you’re at a smaller company, there are times when there’s no one to fill those roles, and if no one does it the company goes under

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Scarface74@reddit

So if you got hit by a bus, do you think the company would go under?

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forgottenHedgehog@reddit

Doing everything yourself is not leading either. You have to delegate to be effective.

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shozzlez@reddit

I just accepted another job offer with a down level in role (and pay) and I’m completely at peace with that decision. I know I CAN be a great tech lead (and likely will again in the future) but I don’t love it. Life’s too short.

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Tango1777@reddit

Kinda similar. I rejected a tech lead job where a company really wanted me, because I didn't feel like only leading and the project itself was also kinda weird. Now that I still code every day for another company, I know it's been a good decision. Coding is the shit for me.

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shozzlez@reddit

Love it. Thanks for sharing.

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deepmiddle@reddit

As someone who stepped down from management a few years ago, I think you will be very happy with your decision. Congrats!

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Primary-Walrus-5623@reddit

I guard my time jealously. I attend only one standing meeting (outside of 1-1's and group meeting) and will never attend a status meeting unless my presence is requested for an explicit reason. I currently run 4 products and my time is split between prototyping new work and optimizing the one product I created. I love programming and attempt to make my IC work match with my interests. I probably code 70% of the time with this approach. I will say one of the keys is trusting your people and providing honest feedback about your expectations and the goals of the team.

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wotamRobin@reddit

I approach my role as a force multiplier for my team members. I give them all the highest-priority tasks, telling them that I trust them to own the solution but will be with them every step of the way, down to spending a week of afternoons pair programming or talking design. To enforce this I regularly offer to pair at random. When I pick up work for myself, I do so from the bottom of the backlog and only if I can't help anybody.

In practice, the result of this approach is that I end up pairing about 75% of the time I'm not in meetings. My engineers become the SMEs because I trust them to define the architecture, and I only step in to point out issues that I'm sure they'll agree with. This means that when issues come up, the team doesn't need to rely on me for solving them -- but since I've paired with them, I'm able to solve the issues if needed.

So to summarize, the value and impact that I'm creating is in my team members' technical skills, and doing it this way actually removes responsibilities from me.

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666codegoth@reddit

This is almost exactly what I would've written had I not seen your reply first. This seems to be the one true way

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rangorn@reddit

You seem like an awesome guy, keep it up.

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anubus72@reddit

Why would you take the absolute lowest priority tasks when you get time to work? I get having your team take high priority stuff, but taking tickets from the bottom of the backlog is kinda the opposite point of having a prioritized backlog

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dromtrund@reddit

IMO the key is to take tasks that won't block anyone if they're not finished in the expected time frame. Doesn't have to be the lowest priority tasks

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wotamRobin@reddit

Ah I think I slightly misspoke. I take something from the bottom of the sprint backlog, not the full backlog. So I'm still working on relatively-high-priority tasks when compared with others. But I'll actively try not to deprive others of opportunities to own important parts of the system.

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bigfish_in_smallpond@reddit

This is my strategy too. I try to give the most interesting tasks to the team, I'm going to be providing input on it so I still get to have the fun of learning it. But I'll take the least glamorous stuff for myself.

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jeerabiscuit@reddit

Pretending to work while others work. Such things are a total scam and need to be called out...

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nobody-important-1@reddit

Pair programming is a real thing?

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i_am_le_maestro@reddit

I had the same idea about pair programming for a long time, but in my current team/company it’s actively supported and encouraged to unblock and uplevel team members. Got to play around with intellijs code with me tool on a recent project which was neat - it worked quite well.

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SimasNa@reddit

It's tough to maintain work-life balance as a tech lead, especially since the role in most cases is 50% management/leadership and then you're expected to deliver the other 50% of the time. The ratio can vary, of course.

The worst thing that can happen is to have either back to back meetings all day long or have meetings with like 30 minutes in between them, where you can't do anything impactful in between.

The biggest pain point for me was that I still felt like I should be delivering but I had no time for it. Or when I had, I wanted to kind of catch up with work so I tried to work twice as hard.

Not surprisingly, I burned out as a result.

The better approach for me was to not get into difficult coding problems myself but rather give them to someone else. That way I could work on smaller tasks, which were still important, and get a dopamine hit when I finished. It was also one of the hardest things to do when transitioning from an individual contributor to a Tech Lead, since you are used to getting rewarded for solving problems.

However, these are just medium-impact things that helped me create the work life balance. What truly helped is making my wellbeing a priority rather than work. It took a while, but that mindset shift helped me identify what things are not aligned with living a better life.

Because of my experience, I compiled this anti-burnout playbook to get rid of burnout for good. I hope it helps to create more WLB in the new year!

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randomInterest92@reddit

In a small team I don think there is much you can do besides repeatedly saying "no, we don't have capacity because of X,Y and Z. If you want me to do it, either X,Y or Z need to die".

In a bigger team you should really focus on delegating work to ICs. The easiest way to sell extra work is by making sure the ICs get a benefit from helping you.

I promise and fullfill these things when an IC helps me a lot:

Consistently report it positively to upper management -> helps with promotions/salary negotiations
Less "micro management" from my side
I allow the IC some "time off" here and there, e.g. for learning or experimenting around

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iamiamwhoami@reddit

The shortest answer is delegate, and don't join a team where your coworkers are not experienced enough for you to trust them with the tasks you delegate to them. I mostly see tech leads stressed out when they're leading an inexperienced team, and hence are probably inexperienced themselves.

I go back and forth on whether or not that's a good position to get yourself into. On one hand, someone has to do the job. And if they asked you it means you're probably the most experienced developer, and the work will de facto fall on you anyway. You also learn a lot just by making a ton of mistakes. On the other hand, the stress is rarely worth it, and most developers worth their salt don't stay in the position for more than a year or two.

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Scarface74@reddit

You set boundaries.

Context: “staff architect” at a third party AWS consulting company. I lead large implementations.

I am capable of:

Working as a “solutions architect” and having calls with customers or if necessary hop on a plane and work on site to discuss challenges/opportunities, design an implementation plan and work with them.
Act as a project manager and break the project down into work streams, epics, determine dependencies, report statuses, budgets, etc
work as a tech lead and coordinate the seniors who are leading the work streams and doing the hands on work along with sales, the client and project managers once the work has started.
Work as a “senior” engineer leading/mentoring and doing the work.
Doing POCs/MVPs by myself and iterating as I got feedback before socializing it as a standard to the larger company.
actually do the hands on work as a developer as long as it isn’t front end work as part of a scrum team.
Work as a “cloud engineer”/“platform engineer” and implement the infrastructure and pipelines

I’m not bragging, I’m just old and spent the first 25 years of my career at startups wearing whatever hat was necessary.

But I can’t do it all at once. It’s up to the organization to decide how best they want to use my time and talents as long as it doesn’t require me to work more than 40 hours a week.

My current company has decided they want me to spend time doing 1 and 3 and working with a project manager doing #2.

When I was working at a startup, the CTO would mostly have me focus on 5 and 7. We both agreed that there were other developers who wanted to be team leads and didn’t want to handle the ambiguity of unclear requirements that I lived for

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e6bplotter@reddit

Strike a balance between what you want the tech lead role to look like versus what actually needs to get done.

As a tech lead, you're going to be the driving force moving the team forward. This is a great thing, you get to work on interesting problems that are not just limited to building the software.

Your working hours should stay the same from when you previously moved into a tech lead role. This implies a need to prioritize all the things pulling you in multiple directions. Feel empowered to delegate! 😃

Lean on your manager for support, they are there to help you (at least they should be).

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roger_ducky@reddit

Delegate more. Literally think of those on your team as super smart AIs. Give them a general set of boundaries and then let them go wild between them.

Help if they get stuck, but otherwise try to stay a PO/EM.

Also: Have the team be each other’s QA in addition to writing automated tests.

Try to review code given the amount of time you have. Definitely encourage the team to pile on each others’ PRs too.

Know your team is small. So, you need to do IC stuff too. Tell people you can only do about a third of the points you can as an IC, given the “overhead” you have.

(Really about half, but you’ll need to unblock people too — so, give yourself some breathing room.)