5 Mistakes that New Tech Leads Make: Learn to Lead Effectively

Discover the top mistakes new tech leads make and learn key leadership strategies.

When an engineer grows into a leadership role, they have to start thinking about the team before they think of themselves. However, they make a few common mistakes and feel:

“I didn’t code enough”, “Leadership doesn’t get it!”, “Why can’t we get all requirements upfront?”, etc.

I fell into the same trap and have seen many aspiring tech leads, that I mentored, do the same. Today, I am sharing those common pitfalls that new leaders encounter so that you can avoid them.

🚧 1. Frustrated with Distractions

Depending on where you are in your project life cycle, expect different kinds of distractions. Examples,

• When new requirements come up, you need to evaluate & prioritize them. This may need ad-hoc discussions with stakeholders.

• When critical issues surface closer to deadlines, you must help the team find a way forward.

You have to make time for these. That is your job! If you stay busy with mundane things and don’t handle these urgent & important things then you have failed as a tech lead.

I have noticed newer tech leads feel guilty of not “coding” as much as they used to. So, they try to take on these distractions AND still code for 40 hours a week. That tires them out.

What works for me is, that during critical times, I will take the less important P0s myself. That way, I can punt them in favor of the distractions. After years of “tech leading”, I know which distractions to expect and which ones bother me. I watch out for early signs of those.

📅 2. Not Valuing Project Management

If your team does not have dedicated program managers then you are it. For large projects, you need to break them down into milestones and figure out the dependencies. Read more about how to manage long-term projects.

Your job is beyond the basics like:

• Ensuring tasks for upcoming milestones are getting done

• Identifying delays and helping people get unblocked

• Building progress reports

You also need to

• Understand the reasons when things are blocked

• Maybe give suggestions/feedback to a teammate if they are slow

• Manage expectations with stakeholders

Some new tech leads will expect everyone in the team to be equally “motivated and self-manage their work. They get frustrated when others don’t seem equally diligent with “project management”.

🤷‍♂️ 3. Expecting to Know Everything

Nobody knows “everything” and Tech leads are no exception. Problems occur when Tech leads don’t accept this. They begin hiding their lack of knowledge and either try to “learn” everything on the side OR make decisions with half-knowledge.

Read more about how embracing “I don’t know” can be a game changer.

As a tech lead, you should have a reasonable working knowledge of different parts of your system. However, you have to rely on “experts” for specialized areas. Redirect the specialized questions to those experts.

Also don’t feel pressured to decide in the moment if you don’t have the background.

• Saying “I don’t know the details. Let me get back to you” is a great way to not make hasty wrong decisions.

A delayed decision is better than a rushed bad one.

💬 4. Under-valuing Communication Skills

Your job is no longer just writing code. The sooner you accept it, the better it is for your growth as a tech lead. Your role also requires you to:

• Share ideas with others and build alignment

  • I hadn’t invested in communicating effectively.

  • That meant, I wrote & rewrote my documents and got frustrated with the process. Read my tricks to write well.

• Foster a healthy team culture

  • Watch out what you are saying with your body language.

  • Do you ‘roll your eyes’ when you hear bad ideas or do you ‘not appreciate the team’ on accomplishment?

  • Your body language can make people feel “small”. Read more about how to improve your non-verbal communication.

• Give honest feedback.

  • I used to hesitate to give feedback and sugarcoat the message. That left others with vague feedback.

  • Read how to not hesitate to give feedback.

🔝 5. Not Managing up

Leadership may want your team to deliver faster or have another “unreasonable” ask. Your job is to highlight the steam’s challenges and explain the constraints to leadership. Failing to do so can result in two outcomes:

• You force your team to overwork and then they hate you and leave.

• The team fails to deliver and leadership loses trust in you.

The harder part is identifying when the leadership has “concerns” but hasn’t asked you yet. You manage these by

• Sharing frequent status updates for the project

• Broadcasting your accomplishments & failures(and what you learned).

• Proactively, asking leadership about their concerns

Parting Note

Few people are naturally born leaders; most of us learn leadership skills over time.

So it is natural for engineers who step into a leadership role, to make these mistakes during their transition. However, recognizing these behaviors and taking corrective action is the first step toward effective leadership.

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🎤 Shoutouts

1. Read

   Mindful Matrix
   by
   Sagar Gandhi
   if you are interested in LLMs

2. Most micromanagers are blind to being seen as one by

   Anton Zaides

3. Dealing with Impostor Syndrome in the Engineering World by

   Nicola Ballotta

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