Things I Was Unprepared For As A Lead Developer

fair warning this is gonna be a little bit interactive so please try to go ahead and raise your hand if I asked you to would be nice first question who here is a developer and/or designer and please keep your hand raised if the answer is yes who does not to be intent to be a developer for ever okay okay quite a lot of people good good good then who here thinks he or she is ready to lead a team lice lice who just likes raising their hand cool thank you all so my name is Chris Kyle the Fink I do stuff at AB stamp HP I was a coach at we camp which is an awesome adventure of full of coding on an island in the Netherlands if you want more information for next year I can recommend it please ask me later I also currently work at ticket swap but this story is not about ticket swap before I go ahead and tell my story can anybody tell me who this is it is Alex and that is great indeed very good this guy was 33 years old when he already was the greatest emperor in general that the ancient age knew he conquered dozens of countries he led great armies and he was raised from a little boy up to the man that he became through military school and army school to to become that that great emperor that leader of men now of course he had all that privilege remember privilege he had it I didn't you probably don't have access to military school from birth either so the question then becomes how do you get to be that that grade leader that some of you think you are we are which is which is great I learned it on the job I didn't went to school for it I learned on a job and this was basically my past this is an oversimplification of a couple of career options that most developers know this light was not made by me was made by Brendan Hayes he did an excellent talk at Rubicon a couple of years ago about hacking your career it's on YouTube and I can really recommend it but what it shows is that you have junior development where most people start when they leave the university and then you have a myriad of options development offend you Liz become a more senior developer you can start your own company you become a project leader all these things that you can do what a lot of people I know do is they start junior developer they've come a MIT developer senior developer and then they take a turn to the left that's what I did and I became an engineering Lee team lead lead developer as it was called in my company back then now what you can see here is that it's not a developer role anymore right this is in the management track and this is interesting because the role was still called lead developer but it's in the management track now this can differ for copper company some definitely developers I know do only that they lead the development team they don't do vacation days they don't do any of the personal things just development that's cool but just to realize that for companies it can be in that track ok so my story at the time I was working for a small company within a very large company it was one of the biggest media companies in the Netherlands which to be fair to analysis very small but still we were in a very new development team this company although being in existence for 15 years didn't have a development team of their own so the form of a development team I was part of it but the manager there left okay that happens right so right before Christmas my boss she comes up to me and she says you know we think that you would be the ideal person to be the leader of this team what we call lead developer oh that's nice came with a good pay raise of course sure yeah yeah I'm up for the task I'll do that this was a team of four out of developers next to me there was a second fly more technical support team which was supposed to be merged in to that development team and there was more to external teams that worked on a remote location so all in all this was twelve thirteen people I would start 2nd of January first was on a Sunday 2nd of January and I had for a week long like from Christmas to New Year's Eve New Year's New Year's sorry I had all these dreams these hopes these things that I I knew I could do they had a huge amount of legacy I hate that outward but the Hat a huge amount of unmaintained comme des we're still running on a older PHP version they were still using a database out of the stone Age's which requires two people to administer insane I had all these things that I saw it by myself like oh yeah now is my time right my opportunity to change things in here I'm ready to lead this team to victory did it go so well at all I had at least these hopes and all these things that I want it but I could so distract it I could distract it by a lot of fire things things have nothing to do with upgrading PHP or databases or migrating or legacy nothing whatsoever I did other stuff and so a couple of months and I started to ask myself the question why were these tasks so distracting for me what were these things that took up all of my week and I couldn't do anything done why I just wasn't prepared I was not prepared for this job at all it turned out that the company and I had a very different meaning to what it meant to be a lead developer they thought this is just gonna be a manager type of person a manager type of person that has intimate knowledge into the code in our code base so that has all kinds of benefits whilst I thought I'm just gonna be the one responsible I'm gonna spear had new ideas they didn't wanted to wanted me to spearhead new ideas at all at all so my first lesson the thing that I learned and thing that I want to give you today is expectation management it is perhaps the most important thing in your career but especially to me when I transition to to being a leader Phillip ER in fact I'd say that you should learn what is expected from you and be honest about would you expect from others when discussing the possibility even of becoming a leader you can you can stand up right now you can leave if you think I'm boring you can fall asleep you can open Twitter and just sink into your timeline if you want but please go home with this there's one lesson everybody got it expectation management very important cuz I didn't do this I didn't do this at all and it left me to not even see the code at all anymore none of it oh that's not true the only time I did saw code was during a coat review which I did a lot of now spending less time on your coat is of course logical you're in any role it is a leadership role and there is different other stuff that you have to do to come to it but nothing at all that's that's too little I'd say so if you're ever in this kind of position if you're in that kind of position right now try to find ways to get more Co time again people ask me okay so what is a good sort of trait that trade / / time what what how much percent of time should I dedicate to the coat and I can't answer that I don't know it depends on the context it depends on you as a as a leader depends on your company it depends on your team heavily but I'd say personally my god feeling would say at least 40% of your time should go to the code because it is the output of your team and being our coding doesn't mean just being behind a computer on your own programming it can be a myriad of things like pair programming and stuff like that which all help so make sure you still got enough code times basically what it rhymes I figured out three things to cope with this the fact that I didn't see to go anymore three little things that if you hear them you're probably thinking what the hell is this guy thinking about I mean couldn't you figure it out in the first day seriously but no I could and I hope you all could but if not take this home so the first thing was agenda management who here uses an agenda nobody a couple of people then who uses it every day a lot of people okay that's cool cuz I didn't do that either when I was a developer we had the Sprint planning retrospectives and the daily standup that was it no more meetings other than that plus my entire team had to go to that meeting room so I just followed along with them was easy I didn't need an agenda of course I had one for personal stuff and it wasn't my phone but yeah how many appointments do you have I didn't need it so it wasn't very good at managing my agenda either then the week the same week as I became a lately developer so from 2 to 6 of January my entire agenda was filled for the rest of the year all these meetings about new projects products board meetings keeping the board in loop system administrators that wanted to talk to me perfectly support people that wanted something of me and they all needed my time multiple times a week hours on end with no agenda for those meetings so agenda management is something I had to employ I had to be able to block hours in my agenda to keep him free no meetings my entire morning no meeting if you're somebody that it's more productive in the afternoon block your afternoon do the meetings in the morning this really helps you to keep that focus keep that code time as well because otherwise it's so hard other people will just walls over your agenda and it's gonna be filled up now this first thing required a second thing of me to say no more often I don't know about you but for me that's hard it's hard to do I don't often say no I like to say yes I like to help people if they come up with a problem I like to say yes I like to get them moving and solve their problems it's what I do I'm a problem solver right so saying no that was super hard saying no to a project request sorry I can't do it right now it was super hard but I have to learning now I'm not saying that you should be impolite to people though I'm not saying that you should shut him down off and shum down and not interface with him at all what you can do though is give them alternatives sorry I won't be able to make that meeting on Tuesday but what about next week I have a slot open there sorry I'm probably not the one that can produce that sequel report that you're asking but there's a database administrator right there try him he may have time you know help people on their way they'll remember you as a polite person and hopefully they won't ask so much of you anymore but at least you say no so you said a boundary for yourself it's very important cool agenda management saying no more often okay this school I got this there was a third thing though something so easy that I totally forgot about it delegating I'm not alone I am NOT the team there is no I in team I found out that every little thing that people asked of me I took it as a very personal question I thought I had to do it I thought I had to fix that bug I thought I had to implement that feature I was personally responsible of it which of course makes no sense there's an whole team there was 12 people for crying out loud I could do this I could go up to his team and say hey this new feature came in what do you think how should we build it hey people support reported a bug who's free who can do something from here delegating and I'm not saying that you should tell people what to do that's very bossy style now it's not my style but discussing things and delegating them asking people to help you people want to help like I did for me the best time was when something came in and I was able to pair up with for example a more junior developer because then I could have the more delegating exercise and I was able to do code time so it was like a double high-five seriously people love to help especially in a team otherwise they wouldn't be working in a team makes sense right I've got three things agenda management saying no more often delegating cool dit dos that was still not able to do all the other things that I wanted my god what was it doing where was my time going I looked at my agenda and over time I saw a pattern of things that I was doing other than all those things that I set out to you for the most part I was doing a lot of cultural things and culture building things now like I said this it was a very new development team and it's very hard for new people to come together and form a culture now I had to form an idea in my hat what I wanted that culture to be this is before I even took this to the team this was like okay what what as a leader what do I want this culture to be in this in this group of individuals that have come together and be paid to do this job so I thought of you know what are things that I like behavioral thinks that I like in people I like promoting good ideas for example taking responsibility for your work and your IDs those things that I value highly but there's also a saying that the culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior a leader is reeling to tolerate it's like okay worst behavior what's that got me thinking what is the behavior I'm not willing to tolerate people coming in late I come in late people have good reasons to come in late I don't know people didn't transfer knowledge when it happens hate it when it happens and of course one day on a Friday five o'clock in the afternoon something broke down on the website most people went home already and it was in a new feature that's somebody that went home built and all signs pointed towards the knowledge not being transferred you know all this stuff that I was thinking about that I wasn't willing to tolerate so next week we fixed it barely we fixed it and next week when I was calmer I organized the retrospective an extra retrospect if I should say to you know discuss why did this happen what was the root cause of it and I of course stupidly saw I already know what I'm gonna hear I already know the answer I'm just gonna ask it to be polite I knew that they didn't transfer their knowledge but they did of course they did they were not stupid they're professionals they're paid for it their team I just had to learn another big lesson which is Trust trust in the professionals that you work with I had to let it go literally I had to stop micromanaging I had to trust these people to do their job they were paid for and Trust is something I also fell you highly I like to be trusted and I learned dust ly to place more trust into people so I think that a culture is also shaped by the best behavior a leader is willing to promote works both ways but there was more things to this culture thing things that I that took a lot of time for me especially because we had quite a number of junior the ratio between junior people and more senior people was like 50% which is a lot especially for a new development team so it was hard so one of the things that I took extra amount of time for was motive mentoring sorry mentoring people to reach their goals the things in their careers and life's that they want to achieve through work as one of their means you know figuring out what you want to your career when you want to do what are your not so good in yeah and how can I help you with that trying to unlock people themselves trying to unlock their process of thought it takes a lot of time but it's so important to do especially as a leader because if ready we wondered or not but a lot of young people still look up to older people and leaders so if you as a leader open up and start mentoring and in return be are willing and prepared to be mentored a little bit that opens up a world of possibilities giving and receiving feedback it's also something that I took a lot of time for I personally think it is very important for my personal growth to constantly ask for feedback of people I do that I did that back then I still do it in my current job even if there is not an official feedback program or anything where I 360 degrees feedback program and I believe what they call it even if we don't have that officially I still created it and I want feedback give me feedback in turn I would also like to give you feedback in order for you to grow and again having a very union team that was very important to me it shapes your culture whoo what happened there there we go motivating is another thing I I had a lot of issues with like I said we had a lot of legacy we were working with a database technology from a company I will not mention you probably guessed it already and it's not very up-to-date anymore especially the version that we were using so motivation was hard to find it was hard to find motivation for people to get up in the morning go to work work on a feature in that database and then have join their work because joy and your work is really important so we found out that by by trying to motivate each other more you can really find that fun spot again and motivation can be can be very interesting thing to see it can be like I don't know if there's anyone here that does boxing but if you do there's a punching bag and somebody holds it for you you start punching it and then this other person it's like yeah come on you can do it one more punch Artur up up down up this is very motivating if you've ever experienced that you know that is it can be a very motivational thing to to have experienced and it is roughly the same I found in in a work situation if there's someone who says yeah we can do this and it's gonna be fun because we're gonna do this and this and this and there's a challenge over here clone let's do it together that is extremely motivating to people but it takes a long time it's a huge impact on your culture I know companies that don't do it and the people just leave after a certain amount of time and it's just sad to see talking about leaving I know it came back down your culture is hiring and firing people sadly I had to fire someone once in my life and it was one of the worst experience that I ever had because it's really sad but equally interesting is hiring people that's that's incredibly hard as gram told us this morning it's not just a pipeline thing it's a culture thing as well and having it all correct and in order that is that is hard especially as a white male but the impact on your team is also very interesting because teams are immutable that means the teams don't change if you take team a at two people it doesn't become team a plus team plus two people it becomes team B which is an entire different team with different cultural values different insides different roles even though they're not explicit so this is very important to know and as a thought experience if you are currently in the process of hiring someone or you just got a new teammate watch this process happen in your own team it's very interesting your team becomes new team sickness and other personal problems of people are some things that I wanted to handle with grace so I invested a lot of time in it I had a co-worker that had a baby on the way which is great it's great but as soon as he got the call come to the hospital you know he would drop everything out of his hands which is fine of course go here take my card go but we as a team had to talk about okay how are we going to resolve it that moment in time when he leaves how are we gonna handle the work that he'd leave that he left us people getting sick has an equally dentin on your or not a dent but an impact on our culture especially if the sickness is prolonged for a period of weeks or months if somebody's missing you can see that the team droves back to another team again because teams are immutable take somebody out it goes good goes okay for a couple of days but after a couple of weeks this team starts to rearrange their roles you know if this this person was a more natural leader and this person is now gone and I don't want to will stand up like yeah but I have a more natural leader now you know there's processes in teams that happen so y'all influences your culture and the last thing I thought really important was leading by example all these things up here that were important to me all these cultural things that I wanted to have without my team having wanting to have them or you know just they were just my values I find I found back then and I still think so that I had to lead by example if I wanted to be mentored I had to start mentoring if I wanted feedback I had to give feedback first and ask it so what I'm trying to say here is I'm more of a leader kind of person and that's not a boss up there not caring about the people he has to work with like my mom that's not me but then I also mean that you're much slower to reach the top sorry I'll get out of the way okay go with sculture now something different something entirely different that might or might not be recognizable for you financial injuries is there anybody here that it owns a company quite a couple of people yeah you probably know what I'm talking about here so when I wanted to new IDE before a new license for we use Jetson jetbrains life ideas at work I used to go up to my manager or we had an assistant of the director that handled all kind of transactional things with money but when I became elite developer my team start to go to me you know how do we get money I don't know let me check because even in personal life I'm not I'm not very good with money so let me tell you how how I handle my money money comes in some of it goes through a separate account for you know all the standard things like Rend and insurances don't like that and the rest is basically for me to spend and then there's a little piece at the end of the month that's left but so I'm not very good with money but businesses don't like it when your miniature their money like that they don't like that for you well so that day the boss comes up to me and says hey you know that database company that we've hired for six months now how much did it cost us up to now and how much more do you want to spend on them interesting question let me get back to you on that now back then I didn't have to beard but if I had I would be stroking it all day I cleared out my schedule this was out right after lunch s I cleared up my schedule for the entire day I thought you know I'm not the best in Excel and in accounting but I can do this I can do this I'm a fairly decent programmer I should be able to do this right so I downloaded all the invoices that I had for my mail and and other places I did an ephah system and started typing away in Excel and making formulas and you know like you do when you don't know Excel at all I I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I I fail miserably so it was six o'clock I thought you know I'm just gonna go home take all these with me have a nice dinner first and then re-energized and in the evening and if need be the entire night I can just do this so I got home and luckily my wife already prepared dinner but I wasn't I wasn't paying attention you probably know what that's like right coming home and not paying attention to your wife or spouse so she says you know what's wrong you're distracted with something what's wrong so what tell are the entire story she tells me you know what go sit on the couch is the remote the TV go what chump thing give me 30 minutes and I'll be back with the solution okay nice nice cool yeah sure why not finally half an hour not having to think about it that's good and she comes up like literally 30 minutes later with this and she says yeah you know all those invoices just fill them out there and then over there you can see how much you spend and over there you can estimate how much you can still oh my god your life saver Wow now if you're questioning this story she's right here so you can ask this was one of the hardest thing I had one of the hardest thing I had to do at that moment but it taught me it occurred to me back then I know that I had managers before leaders financial people that you know I'd seen these things before couldn't I have asked them to take a better look at it could could I could I have done that and I guess I could have I could have learned more from the leaders that I already had I could have asked them hey what's their budget as a deaf team where are we spending our money on how do you do that what's your system I don't need to the exact numbers I don't care about those just teach me here it more than just developer stuff because I know code already and you probably don't teach me what you do now learn from our previous current and future leaders is something that I learned by now another thing that I used and their skill that I had to use quite often there was public speaking so tada Here I am is extremely useful to be able to tell a story about a problem in laymen terms because the board of directors data no code your clients probably don't know it support people don't probably don't know it and marketing probably don't know that know it sales does sure doesn't know it so being able to explain things in a simpler way it can really make your job easier for example I once use this picture to explain the state of our code base true story and after me telling stories about you know why is it so hard to migrate our code base from one hosting provider to the other hosting provider using this as a metaphor it it clicked better with the board that yes we needed more money we needed people and we needed more time to do this so being able to explain that safe to our team a lot of trouble talking to others and with others I do not mean other developers or designers or product managers because I I knew how to talk to those people now they're my kind of peeps marketing sales communication people accountings controllers people like that those were the hardest ones to talk to because what do I have in common with them but it turned out it was very important to be able to talk to them because marketing was about to launch a marketing campaign at primetime that I didn't know about oh so it was very important to me to do to be able to do that to be able to talk to other people outside of my comfort zone I had to learn that I had to find out how to do that and it turns out finding common ground with these people is the key to success so I for example the luck that I had to do a management training and so did all the other new managers in the company I wondered then was the marketing director so next Monday I could ask him you know how was your weekend how did you do that exercise as well and we had we found common ground to talk to each other we connected a little bit more and it was easier to talk about work after that these are all the things that I've learned that I struggle with that I've probably done wrong things that I've probably doing wrong right now just the fact that I know what I'm doing wrong doesn't mean I'm not doing it wrong anymore but if there's one final thing that I've learned is that it's not about the title yes my title was lead developer no my title isn't lead developer anymore and just a software engineer but that doesn't mean that I cannot do things that I can't take leadership of my own life my own career my own work my own team the culture in it so there's a lot of things that you if you want to of course can do right now like Monday when you're back for example start mentoring if there's no formal program within your company start one you don't need permission to do that just take somebody else that feels the same way and go to a meeting room and and start flushing out how you want to do this more people will tag along if nobody's into it you can always ask others friends former colleagues people in the community for example are very good ways of mentoring as well there is this website called PHP mentoring now it has been mentioned to me that there should be a - between PHP and mentoring this is a website started by a couple of PHP people but is not exclusively for PHP they do mentoring all sorts of different topics mostly non-technical leader and you can assign yourself either as a sign up as a mentor or a mentee looking for a mentor and this is a great way to meet new people meet new people that have all these other skills that you want to learn or if you think you know I have a good skill that I can give to other people's up there and and become a mentor it's something you can do Monday ask for help more from your peers from your current leaders whoever that may be like I said learn from them ask them for the stuff that you don't know already that you might be able to use later on I found it very hard like I said and this book was gifted to me it's called the art of asking by Amanda Palmer and I can really recommend it it is a great book there's also an audio book which she has done her self and it is excellent feedback you can do this some Monday just ask somebody give me feedback create a Google forum or talk to each other whatever you want you can do this public speaking again you can do this right here at a conference for example but if this audience might be too large for you you can also do lunch sessions which your own team go to your own community I know there's a quite a couple of communities around here you know go there speak they're probably always looking for new speakers I know in Amsterdam and I'm Steph HP we are and it is a great stage to try out new things even when you're anxious to speak and generally take an interest in other people again something you can do today talk to some money today that you haven't met before take an interest and maybe you'll learn something thank you

Channel: Coding Tech

Views: 84,465

Rating: 4.6447792 out of 5

Keywords: software development, senior developer, junior developer, tech lead, lead developer, programming, delegation, management

Id: AwuqJ1qORag

Length: 45min 5sec (2705 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2017