As a leader, what inspection mechanisms help you scale?
Posted by CheeseburgerLover911@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 16 comments
I lead a few eng teams, and i'm trying to scale myself more and be less in the day-to-day.
What are critical inspection mechanisms that you look at ensure that things are going well/off-track? Looking to build a set of reports for myself in the end.
Rex_Thorne@reddit
I scale through Sub-Leader Ownership + Traffic-Light Monitoring: 1. Sub-Leader: clear domain owners 2. What/Targets: measurable success 3. How/Actions: validated approach 4. When/Schedule: time-based checkpoints 5. Problems/Join-in: rule-based escalation
Traffic-Light Signals 🟢 On track → stay out, empower 🟡 Rising risk → observe and challenge assumptions 🔴 Off-track → jump in and unblock
This gives visibility without micromanagement — leaders grow, and issues surface early.
Context: 12+ years in tech R&D, leading multi-discipline engineering teams.
ThlintoRatscar@reddit
This.
It's code for "delegate" which involves letting others do things their own way and screw it up, but not too much or by surprising you.
Rex_Thorne@reddit
Totally agree — they sometimes do it better than I would. I learn from them too.
Things won’t always be perfect, but that’s how we grow together.
maxip89@reddit
sorry you have the wrong mindset to lead any engineering teams.
you think like a bank manager.
this here is tech, really really wrong place for you.
in tech you are building and the teams under you HELP you doing it.
Don't know why you need some reports to undermine trust and efficiency.
Eogcloud@reddit
“How can I make my team despise me immediately”
xaervagon@reddit
This is the right answer. In tech, if you're calling the shots, you're leading the charge.
autisticpig@reddit
Nothing we all love more than metric driven and focused leadership.
maxip89@reddit
you mean that metric that developer X has fixed 100 bugs today he produced the day before?
you mean the efficency which defines "high performing teams" by trust?
Where is the trust, when you have zero trust to the teams?
Don't know where the mindset comes from. This is Ford 1970 (beginning of their downturn) where they started their pip programmes.
Doesn't lead to anything just to report to their higher ups a nice green number.
frizzlejs@reddit
Metrics can lie and so can people. The only way to scale yourself is strong relationships with tech leaders you trust. In your teams and the cross func orgs they work with. And you will need to stay cognizant of their top deliverables, which is surely a friction point you had wished to offload. There is no ai or automation for this.
ramenAtMidnight@reddit
First and foremost, whatever KPI/OKR your team is attached to. For system health: rollback rate, incident rate, incident impact. For individual health, do regular 1-1 and maintain strong trust, that would enable you to receive issues from your teammates.
This answer is super generic, but that’s because your question also lacks info. Tell us what you’re doing right now, and people might give you more ideas
justUseAnSvm@reddit
We use a monthly tag up meeting.
One giant doc, all the critical projects organized by KR, and a monthly update written by the product manager, or sometimes an engineer, along with a notation of the project as either "on-track" or "behind", and present that to the exec responsible for our group. In your example, it might just be you + team leads, but you could also bring in your manager/exec if you wanted to streamline.
The idea, is that you can run down all the projects, there's a fresh update ready to present, and at the end of meeting you know what's going well, where the risks are, and the exec can use that for their own reporting, or to move around resources. The meeting is run by the senior product person, product mostly makes the updates, but every project has at least one assigned "tech lead" and usually a team lead that will sometimes write the updates.
My role is as a "team lead", IC engineer that executes day to day and manages a single development team. I attend this meeting largely for development purposes, and will only speak occasionally: if my line manager, his manager, the product person, or the Sr. Staff "tech lead" aren't around, or if I jump in to make a point about something.
The key to this meeting is really the doc with monthly updates, and getting the group used to running through things quickly, since people like to blab, but it's still a good time for you to quickly question things, or "take this offline" moments when things fail.
Team of teams stuff is really where leadership gets hard, since communication really becomes an issue and the family like dynamics you can use on smaller teams don't really scale. Anyway, if I were leading multiple teams, this is something I would at least try, since in all my experience as a lead, there's no other way to create the executive view besides lots of conversations.
frompadgwithH8@reddit
So you manage IC’s? In those meetings with leadership you often don’t speak?
justUseAnSvm@reddit
I don't manage anyone. I'm an individual contributor that's a team lead. That basically means taking ownership of the teams technical outcomes, that we together are on track to meet our OKR goals, run the basic agile ceremonies, as well as serving as a sort of designated representative for the project in various contexts, like this meeting, with other teams, and other projects. It's sort of mix between individual contributor and project manager, with a little bit more focus on project direction and goals.
we were more junior, and my role in project planning, sprint review, and PR review was a bit more.
As for the specific meeting, it's lead by my skip-level, and one of his Staff++ engineers is the official "tech lead" that presents the update. The Staff++ engineer isn't involved unless we pull him in, and that's usually to resolve some issue when there's disagreement, or to occasionally review technical documents. He tends to just read my update, or alternatively, we'll have the product manager talk.
Our project has been in a little bit of trouble lately, so when that happens, our managers usually speak, since they've been more involved in decision making.
This is just the way we do thing, if my skip level was running the meeting, not his boss and his boss's boss, I think it'd be more appropriate for me to speak, but with the current set up, I think the idea is that the exec gets the updates from the people who work directly for him. If you think about it, I should probably give the update, but the designated "tech lead" role is a guy two levels above me.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
You make more money as a leader, but you have more fun as a follower!
aloecar@reddit
Besides JIRA ticketing, sprint reviews/whatever-your-company-uses-to-claim-that-it's-agile, CI/CD pipelines and testing (both automated and some manual), there's not much else....
"I lead a few eng teams, and i'm trying to scale myself more and be less in the day-to-day."
In my opinion, if you don't rely upon metrics/signals that are automatically generated (ie. CI pipelines and automated testing), then it becomes kinda impossible to get a good view of progress and the state of projects. ICs will say all sorts of stuff. Some ICs are fussy and will complain about everything, but the product they built is in fantastic shape.
behusbwj@reddit
Your job is to translate project work and planning to business outcomes and progress toward business goals. The KPI’s speak for themselves if you led the team correctly in forming them. If you don’t know how to do that yet, you are probably in the wrong role.