The Manager's Path

Why is the tech lead role such a heavy burden? The tech lead has a much wider scope of responsibility than the senior engineer in an individual contributor position. The tech lead is called on to help architect a project, and then to go through the steps of actually planning out the work. The tech lead is expected to make sure the team fully understands the project requirements, the work is planned, and the team is effective and performing well, all without necessarily having any management responsibilities and usually without any specific training. And, realistically, most managers will expect their tech leads to continue to write almost as much code as they did before they took on the lead role. It’s generally a pure increase in responsibility and scope of work. If you’re a first-time tech lead, you have your hands very full.