Tech Leads : Don’t Be A Victim

(This is post #6 in my series : “7 Things You’re Doing Wrong As A Tech Lead”)

Complaining is easy. You could probably rattle off 100 things that you’d want to change about your codebase, product, team or company. What effect does it have to be the first one listing problems with something? Think you’re being helpful? Well, you’re not.

It is exhausting to face a barrage of negativity. It also makes your own world-view more negative to constantly be in that mode.

Don’t have a “victim mentality” — as a leader you’re expected to tackle problems, not act like they are “happening to you”

• If you spot a problem, fix it, don’t just complain about it
• You are expected to be able to work with other teams, and influence the other tech leads — don’t put your head in the sand because a problem isn’t entirely in your domain
• If this is a purely technical issue (”how do we build a cross-platform authorization API?”), there is no reason you and your peer Tech Leads can’t handle that. Get together with the relevant people and hammer out a proposal.

I’ve often seen Tech Leads meetings be a sea of complaint and inaction. Is yours like that? What are you doing to change it?