Tech Lead Digest is a publication dedicated to topics relevant to technical leaders, engineering managers, and software architects. Through articles, case studies, and interviews, Tech Lead Digest covers leadership strategies, team management techniques, and career development advice for tech leads. Readers can learn about effective communication, team-building, and leadership skills essential for success in technical leadership roles.

Tech Lead Digest

Engineering leaders need to adapt to a rapidly changing environment influenced by AI advancements and industry upheavals such as big tech layoffs. Tools like CodeRabbit offer solutions to reduce code review time and improve code quality. The shift to remote work and fluctuating VC funding have significantly impacted the engineering landscape, making it crucial for leaders to navigate these changes effectively.

Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore

Didn’t like how I click a link to arrive at <a href="https://daily.dev" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://daily.dev</a>, to then click a link to arrive at <a href="https://leadershipintech.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://leadershipintech.com</a>, to then click a link to get to the actual article… Much like this title says, it’s not 2015 anymore…

What I see is that managers who have a basic “hello world” education think they understand programming and then try to bring everyone on the team up to their level.
There was a time when a lot of refactoring went on behind the scenes, where managers only saw the end result, which was elegant and clean. They never saw the giant mess that was created to get to that polished end result.
What goes wrong today is that managers have this obsession with measuring work in progress. They want to see lots of shiny Jira ticks moving, they want other developers to peek into your code and start endless discussions about a space or tab that is in the wrong place.
Of course, this obsession lets managers see the big, giant pile of mess that is only temporary, and want to correct you, making the mess even worse. The more they micromanage, the less trust managers have in their programmers, and the worse the product becomes.
Projects fail because managers no longer trust their own people. They prefer to fire a very experienced developer who has proven time and time again that he nails every single project because he failed to show it in Jira tickets.
The hard reality is that good programmer’s work cannot be translated into oversimplified Jira tickets.