There are a lot of speculations in the industry about technical leadership term, especially about who a Tech Lead is and who is not. In some companies, Technical Lead is an official title. In others, it can be a Team Lead or an Architect.
But for me, technical leadership is something broader.
Is an architect a technical leader? A staff engineer? A CTO?
My answer is yes.
From my point of view, technical leadership is the ability to set technical vision for the team, solve implementation conflicts and guide teams through architectural decisions.
There is one interesting video regarding the topic - Level Up: Choosing The Technical Leadership Path. The author is explaining his vision of technical leadership:
Technical Leadership is the act of aligning a group of people in a technical context.
Common examples are solving conflicts in a code review regarding implementation approach, aligning coding practicing, defining technical contracts between teams and components, etc.
From that perspective, the author defines the following career paths:
1. Individual Contributor: Junior Engineer, Middle Engineer, Senior Engineer
2. Manager: Engineering Manager
3. Technical Leader: Staff Engineer, Tech Lead, Dev Lead
So individual contributor path is very limited because from some level of seniority you need to collaborate with other people, present your ideas and explain the reasoning behind your decisions. This requires a different set of skills: communication, leadership, empathy, ownership, delegation, coaching, etc. If you decide to grow in a technical leadership direction, you need to develop these skills like you do with any other technical skill.
#leadership #career