- I still remember when my previous employer has lost domain for like 3 months. Boss and his business partner have setup company and I have joined later. Business partner left.
- I was trying to figure out who have access to domain X? It is not on AWS and by whois it is under some random registrar in Europe. I got just shrug from boss. Everything works so why bother?
- After 3 years of scratching my head and try to repeatedly get it to attention we finally lost the domain (card probably expired), everyone is panicking, because emails has stopped working, so email based 2FA are not working either which has cascading impact on all services. And I am just raging in my office because I was trying to prevent this situation for 3 years to no avail.
- The European registrar did not cooperate at all. We have offered them good chunk of money, no response (weird?), eventually domain got moved around and reregistered by various bots and domain companies and I was able to get it again via domain backorder.
I have left shortly after because this was just ridiculous lack of care with good amount of reactive behavior as a cherry on the top. My take away from this is that you can't change the culture. If top is bunch of sloppy clowns, whole company is going to be the same.
- > After that incident, I created an incident review document and suggested a small review of the tasks that should be prioritized to prevent it from happening again. I got carried away and created an initial presentation for the other backend Chapter Leads with a backend strategy. I do not remember it perfectly, but it included hexagonal architecture, a testing pyramid with contract tests to avoid breaking APIs used by mobile apps, and more
Definitely got carried away. When coming to a new org, it's always good to learn the ropes a bit before fatiguing the team with more work, processes, and burdens.
- I've been tech lead at different companies. Every time I switched companies, I started out as senior dev and got promoted into the team lead role again; each time with full support of my team.
I don't look or act like a leader and this has been a hurdle for me. But what typically happens anyway is; within a few months, my code ends up being a core part of the project; my modules become heavily depended upon and somehow I end up maintaining all the config files and guiding architecture decisions. One of my team members joked that I "conquered everyone's code." I probably write fewer lines of code than everyone else but somehow those lines end up heavily used. So then I basically just ask the big boss for a team lead position.
- "I'm a tech lead, nobody listens"...
1. Listen to what other people say and what they think the problem is, or what the problem "says".
2. Think, ask questions to clarify and repeat step 1. Is the problem actually technical? branch a. otherwise branch b.
a. have you considered the problem is mostly not technical? then proceed to branch b.
b. what miscommunications are keeping the solution from being implemented?
3. Change minds with the words that are convincing to others. Dont be so convinced of your solution that you wouldnt take a better one, return to step 1 unless the problem is "solved"
My blog would be uncompellingly short.
- No need to answer this person's question, they are not asking for help, they are promoting their upcoming book
- Don't rely on hierarchy. Earn others' trust as you would when you are an equal. Don't expect deference just because of your position. Although hierarchical decision making may be more efficient, it's an unnatural system and anti-social and easily generates animosity. You'd do better to empower your peers instead, and show them you are able to listen to them as well. Just like you would with friends.
- You have to build / earn your influence. People listen to you after you have a reputation of being "right" enough times, and by being likeable. Abusing hierarchy isn't it.
- That Spotify squad tribe diagram makes me want to vomit.
- > Technical influence does not start with a title. It begins with the visible impact you create.
That visible impact need not be entirely from your technical work. It is mostly from your relations, communications, the way you present yourself and the perceptions that you can manage to get from others. Infact, technology component is very little.
- I've made similar ones early in my career.
The formula of Trust + Intimacy + Credibility is solid, but I'd add: solve one painful problem first, then earn the right to propose architectural changes. Ship something valuable in the first month, even if it's not perfect. That builds more credibility than any presentation.
- This is a very long winded way of saying the phrase "respect is earned not given".
- I feel terrible for the author, having to work in this kind of structure. Someone should tell mytaxi that even Spotify never got “tribes and squads” to work, it sounds like for the same reasons/problems mytaxi ran into.
Edit: accidentally hit update instead of scrolling…
One thing missing from the article that I don’t think has been mentioned is confidence and setting expectations. I’ve found if I expect certain results and convey confidence, people are more likely to follow your lead, or at least listen to you. Don’t act like a know it all, and be sure to encourage and question others so the environment is collaborative (solve problems as a group; don’t be a hero). But set expectations.
Also, I don’t think you mean “intimacy.” Do you mean “empathy?”
- Oh my. If self-otientation is the denoninator then dont advertise your thing multiple times. Instead keep that out and Ill say cool learned something and come back. At some point ill notice the course/book/whatever and be more interested.
- Only thing I can say is that, what doesn't work for me, is leads that just tell you how to do things. I completely agree with my tech lead, but also it just includes only his opinion and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Is this my ego? Maybe.
- > I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?
TL;DidntRead
Precisely. Take the `TL` title out the door. Take the `ego` out the door.
Then, step in the door - as a friend, with empathy, proactive listening and support the engineers.
Round-table `discussions`. Not Waterfall.
My 2 cents.
- If its any consolation, perhaps there might've been a few other highly intelligent capable sensible people in existence over the last few... shall we say, millennia, who, weren't really listened to either ? ;)
- Doesn’t only apply to leads, any new employee faces the same dynamics. Honestly it takes a while to understand not just what is broken at a company, but more importantly why. Otherwise the obvious fix might be a band-aid.
Reminds me of an old post by Joel, “fixing things when you’re a grunt.” His advice was similar.
- I find tech leads to be the most difficult people in any organization to work with (always with exceptions), I think it’s because they are still learning the lead part, and at the same time are trying to prove themselves.
Coming in with a hexagonal overhaul is a great example. At least in this case it seems the writer didn’t dig his heals in too much.
- What I read in the story is the context and some action, but not the result. It is implied there is some sort of result, but it is not described, especially how the actions contributed to the result. It may be well intended, but very superficial, childish.
- > Note: this article is a translation from the original “Soy Tech Lead y no me hacen caso. ¿Qué hago?”, in Spanish.
I wonder if "tech lead" coincidentally are two words that are the same in Spanish as English, or if this is considered a technical phrase.
- One of them could be sabotaging you so he or she can take ur spot
- At previous corporation, the tech lead simply recommended for sackings a developer who was questioning his approach. Once he got sacked, everyone listened...
...and then most of best skilled people left in the following weeks.
Tech lead then hired his mates and company nose dived.
- Welcome to Hell, kid.
I was a senior manager, for much of my career, and had about a 30% hit rate, with folks listening to me. My employees had to listen to me, but I actually encouraged them to talk back, if they had issues with my direction.
My bosses and peers?
...not so much...
This was especially true of the Japanese (I worked for a Japanese company). Even though I had a pretty significant level of influence (for a Westerner), I still had to beg for folks to listen to me.
My favorite, was when my team was assigned to help a Silicon Valley startup that my company had made a deal with, after the ink was dry on the contract.
There were a lot of problems with that relationship. Most of them, were because the senior Japanese management had made some really big mistakes; chiefly because of cultural differences between the companies (the startup was actually really good, but they were a fairly typical "smoke and mirrors" Silicon Valley startup, and had a different approach to pitching that didn't work well with the Japanese. Neither side really understood the other).
We did our best, but our hands were tied. It did not end well, which was pretty disastrous.
If someone had asked me to help out, before they signed the contract, it would have been a much better outcome. I'm no captain of industry, but the problems were pretty glaring and obvious, even to us mensches in the trenches.
> I think I never read as much in my life as during the month between announcing I was leaving my previous job and joining mytaxi.
I liked reading that. I would love folks to do that kind of thing, more often.
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- The trust equation implicitly assumes honesty. It’s a second-order model: it explains how trust forms among good-faith actors, not how to detect bad ones.
Credibility, reliability, and intimacy all collapse without honesty — you can simulate them briefly, but they’re structurally unstable. Once dishonesty is detected, self-orientation effectively goes to infinity and trust snaps to zero.
So the equation is a trust amplifier, not a lie detector. Useful for healthy teams, dangerous if applied naively in adversarial or performative environments.
- Leave.
- "Here's a simple formula that solves this very complex problem that is different for everyone."
Good luck with that.
- If nobody is listening to you then you aren't a tech lead, just saying
- make it a secret, start with "dont tell anyone else but..."
- sounds like that person isn't a tech lead
- Just for the laughs, some year ago I had to remind one of the juniors that I was the one in charge, not him.
Since he looked unimpressed I asked him to hand me a pen on his desk. He promptly gave me the pen.
"See? You're already doing whatever I ask."
- Listen to them.
- Another website blocking VPN and forcing users to reveal their identity, great.
- there's another dimension is how ready is the group to your ideas
some teams distort the meaning of things, and if you try to bring improvements (QA, velocity) they will reject it right away no matter great you are.
- Become a leader.