Talking with Tech Leads: From Novices to Practitioners

by Patrick Kua

A book for Tech Leads, from Tech Leads. Discover how more than 35 Tech Leads find the delicate balance between the technical and non-technical worlds. Discover the challenges a Tech Lead faces and how to overcome them. You may be surprised by the lessons they have to share.

Now available at https://leanpub.com/talking-with-tech...

Genres: Leadership, Management, Technology, Business, Technical, Nonfiction, Programming

281 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2014

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unlike general management how-tos which are a dime a dozen, there are almost no good books on technical leadership, so the author definitely gets an A for effort in trying a fill a much-needed niche. And the interview format was a promising idea, especially given the treasure trove of expertise that ThoughtWorks lead consultants have (disclaimer: I worked for ThoughtWorks for 4 years but didn't work with any of these interviewees).

Despite that promising potential, the execution of the book was quite disappointing. I am fairly certain that the interviews were actually just email surveys, because they are one-way (no follow up questions related to the content are asked) and the same questions are repeated to most interviewees. Such a format might have been a good way to gather preliminary research and identify common threads, but when read in its full form was repetitive and superficial. A good interviewer knows when to stop their subject and have them unpack a casual statement that might contain some wisdom. If I was an editor, I would've suggested that Kua toss most of the filler and just do in-depth podcast discussions with maybe 5 of the most promising subjects. I don't think there would be a way to make a book-length treatment of any of this material.

Sifting through the whole book, I did pull out a few interesting nuggets which you can find in my Kindle Notes & Highlights. I'm sure the ideas can be found scattered in blogs. However, as written I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on this one. Hopefully I can recommend a better book on the subject in the future.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bunch of interesting interviews. Only downside is they all have pretty similar backgrounds. Would have liked more class and experience diversity.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book, but ...
* with a limited use cases list :)
* you have to accept its unconventional approach

Basically, this book in 80% consists of questionnaires filled by Tech Leads - both relatively inexperienced & seasoned. Questions vary, but to be honest they still present pretty much the same views & end with drawing very similar conclusions, which ... of course is not a problem. Because this book is aimed to help fresh Tech Leads to set a proper attitude & correct priorities - providing so many rational (& enriched with several warstories) inputs adds a lot of credibility.

If you're not a new Tech Lead (or aiming to become one soon), this is not really a book for you.
I think I will recommend "Talking with Tech Leads" to my subordinates.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good to use to figure out what other books to read

[Haris Čustović · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contains some valuable information and insights on how to play the tech lead role, but most of the points laid out in interviews are a bit repetitive and even too corporate for my taste. Way too often the advice is given to sacrifice your own free time and mental space, just to be more successful in the role.

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Came across this book after listening to the podcast with Patrick on Software Engineer Radio, which I found quite interesting and wanted to get a bit deeper into the topic.

Unfortunately this book isn't what I was looking for. 90% of it is snippets from the interviews with other tech leads (majority of them are from ThroughtWorks but not all) and it's highly repetitive, and very generic. Everyone struggles with finding time for writing code which they enjoy very much doing, everyone is finding people aspect the most difficult. The worst part is that it doesn't go any further than that, there's almost no real insights about what to do with all that. I guess there are plenty of books about soft skills but then I am not sure what this book is supposed to be.

If you can extract and condense the essence, it'd be a very interesting article. But what happened in the end for me is that I had bookmark falling out of the book and I just couldn't find the spot where I stopped reading last time, because it's so repetitive. Figured that's a good sign to give up on the book! I finished about 3/4 of the book though.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

An important contribution, but hamstrung by its format.

The book's format is asking ~50 tech leads, mostly from ThoughtWorks, a few questions:
- what should the tech lead focus on
- how do you manage time
- how do you balance coding/non-coding responsibilities

This is an important book; there are many management books, but not much focussing on technical leadership. It was interesting hearing from the individual tech leads in their own voices, and hearing about individual projects was good for examples. But nobody had enough pages to drill down into specifics. The best moments were when some tech leads became vulnerable, recounting failures and what to learn from them.

It was reassuring to hear that almost every tech lead has trouble balancing coding and non-coding responsibilities, and nice to hear the wide variety of strategies for time management.

I found myself wishing that the book was rearranged to be indexed by themes (as the excellent conclusion is), then it would be a lot easier to compare different approaches to the same challenges. It'd be easier to use as a reference material too, if the time management tips were collected together rather than scattered every 4 pages.

It was a little frustrating how many interviewees were from ThoughtWorks - it left me wondering whether the approaches outlined are general, or are specific to the development context of ThoughtWorks.

It's a good book for a new Tech Lead seeking some confirmation that everyone's going through the same challenges. But it could have been a much better (and shorter) book with a different format, and perhaps some more diversity of workplace interviews.

[Mindaugas Mozūras · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A set of people does not make a team."

This book is a deftly organised collection of interviews with tech leads. It's arranged around four main topics: People, Tech, Business and You. Interviewees have a varied palette of experience. There are answers from developers who stepped into the role recently. And there are answers from veteran tech leads who've seen and dealt with various situations.

Responses do get a bit repetitive after a while. Nor did Talking with Tech Leads manage to surprise me. But after reading it, I feel more confident and reassured. The author, Pat Kua, created something distinct that didn't exist in the market before. It's a worthy starting point before taking deeper dives into specific topics.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive, shallow, and over representation of tech leads from thoughtworks employees and clients.

[Dejan Vukmirovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

The brilliant read.

This book will not give to some Tech Lead a list of answers to his questions, or provide him with tooling on how to resolve problems he is encountering at work. But it will bring a sense of calmness. Because when you start reading this book you realise that all those worries that you have are not because of you not knowing how to do your job, and are definitely not because of the incapability of your organisation that you so easily blame. These issues (lack of time for coding, so many meetings, context switching...) are a part of job description for a Tech Lead, or at least they should be if JDs were truly realistic.

And format of the book is working great. Although all interviewees are answering the same questions, and they all touch the same points, it still offers a variety of thoughts.

The only thing I could see as a "problem" is that too many interviewees went through the same company, and probably carry the similar experience (support from peers, etc...). Bigger variety would increase the "coverage" of the industry even better.

To me this is a must read for all engineers that are transitioning to managerial roles (Tech/Team Lead being probably the first one in that direction). And also for people that are in this role already but are still fighting to embrace all non-technical aspects of their work. I will definitely make it a mandatory read for all of the Tech Leads that I'm managing.

[Andras Csibi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked how this book is not about the author telling you how to be a tech lead, it's about a bunch of different people telling you how to be a tech lead. It's a bit more evidence-based when N = 20 instead of N = 1.
Still, I struggled hard to finish this book. It became repetitive quite quickly. In a way, this was good because this lets you find common patterns and draw your own conclusions. On the other hand, this gets boring. Yes, you have to pay attention to the people. Finding time for coding is hard, yet important. Can't keep your head down, gotta understand business needs.
This leads me to my biggest problem, which might be related to the selected tech leads not being diverse enough. They were all from mid-sized companies doing waterfall development disguised as agile development. This resulted in a book that is full of agile dogma. After all, I'm fairly certain that not 100% of tech leads think that pair programming is the only way to produce software, and I would have liked to hear their take on tech leadership too.
Overall, I liked this book, though. There were some cool practical tips in it, and it was nice to see that others are struggling with the same problems as I am. I'm not alone, this is indeed hard, I will get better.

[Edoardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is short, so it makes for a very quick reading. The introduction is interesting, but most of the book are examples of tech leads. It may help build some general idea about how a tech lead operates, but will give you very few insights on what to bring to your table in your organization.

The format is interesting (a long series of interviews) but the execution is suboptimal. The interviewees profiles are similar and their key insights repeat a lot. Also it seems the focus is on tech leads in a consultancy business (there is a lot of talking about "picking the right technology", which is something you don't want to see too often in a product business).

Overall is so short that you may want to read it (especially if your received it for free), but expect insights more useful to a consultancy business than to a product company and to draw your own conclusions.

How to improve?
- A recap of key insights in different areas (es: technology choices, personal growth, ...) that can be put in practice
- More diverse backgrounds
- Asking questions to emerge more patterns, but it requires more diverse backgrounds

[Peter Rybarczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

As many said before me.
It's a good book, with lots of interesting stories from many tech-leads around the world. But, because of that number, I felt that none of these perspectives have been presented fully to the reader, and as most of them has similar background there is a lot of repetitive content there.

Still, if you accept its flaws, this book is really worth reading, especially for all developers and inexperienced tech-leads, as it shows a really important perspective which is "it's not about code after all". The most important idea I have learned from this book I fact that Tech-lead doesn't have to be the best developer, but he has to be a greater leader, but still, he has to be good enough in coding to get the trust of the team members.

The other, less important ideas are presented very well in the Conclusions chapter, and if you don't like reading stories, this chapter should be good enough to get ideas.

[Jeremy Huiskamp · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a useful look at what a lot of people think the Tech Lead role entails. While on the one hand, there are a lot of diverse opinions, naturally a lot of the interviewees said the same things over and over, and so I found I could only read one interview per sitting or I would stop really paying attention.

As far as I'm aware, Tech Lead isn't really a well established role within the industry and I'm not sure this book really establishes it. Certainly within a single company like ThoughtWorks, it can be fairly well defined, and it's interesting to see how its viewed by the interviewees who are not from ThoughtWorks, but it still feels like a bit of a vague topic.

[Ana Todor · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Talking with Tech Leads’ is different from the very first pages, because it doesn’t take a quantitative approach to leadership, but the much more difficult (and dreaded) qualitative approach. You don’t get the sales-y pitch of “Here’s a bullet-point list of five tips that will make you a killer technical lead in 24 hours”. You get a series of 50 semi-structured interviews, straight off from the trenches.

Read the full review on my personal blog .

[Ricardo Dias · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up after seeing it mentioned in Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s Path, and honestly, I didn’t even research about it, the expectation was high. The topic felt so relatable: a compilation of stories from people going through the transition from individual contributor to leader? Take my money.

But the book doesn’t really go as deep as I hoped. It ends up feeling a bit repetitive. Good ideas and some nice insights, but without enough depth they sometimes come across as clichés. Still worth a skim, but not the career-changing read I was hoping for.

[miki albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allthough the content is great, it gets to be repetitive fairly easy. The actual knowledge nuggets extracted would take up a quarter of this book, but still, the “interview” format presented in the book is a very good touch. Having real individuals presented, you can see how different approaches and personalities can affect the teams performance (in a good or a bad way); it’s more relateable, and somehow better than just a blob of specific best practicies in an abstract format.

[Adam C · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's okay. A good read for someone about to be a tech lead. I thought there would be more here as there is some crossover between tech leads and new engineering managers, but this is very much for just tech leads. It's a bit narrow of a topic and has a lot of anecdotes from tech leads. Clearly very niche and if you are a tech lead (or want to become one) it's a good book for someone early in their career.

[Daniel Blanco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though some of the interviews didn't offer much, I was able to find very good tips on how to improve my role as Tech Lead.

I was able to relate with the difficulties that some of the interviewers had in their teams.

Overall I think this is a pretty good book and any new Tech Lead should read it.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a newly minted tech lead I found this book useful albeit slightly repetitive—a side effect of the authors desire to remove their own bias by asking each interviewee the same questions. Perhaps because of the authors sample group—ThoughtWorkers and ex thoughtworkers—the book has little to offer tech leads working in remote first engineering organisations.

[David S · Rating 2 out of 5]

The content is pretty interesting but it repeats itself too much.
I also felt the way it was done a bit lazy : it simply felt the author sent a survey to its colleagues and he only had to compile them and organize them in a few categories.
It's quickly read and you will better understand what's expected of a tech lead but it could have been way better in my opinion.

[Dimos Raptis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tends to be a bit repetitive, since many interviewees essentially say very similar things. On the other hand, this can help you draw main themes, most of which are also nicely summarised by the author in the end. Interesting as a quick read, but it left me with the feeling that I gained more from the few summary pages at the end of the book than all the interviews.

[Romina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when it came out. Then, when I was feeling alone in a hard day, I'd go back to the stories there. It's like sitting with a friend that reassures you others have gone through the same, that other people also struggled. I have gifted it to new managers a few times. You may not learn anything new, and other books have a lot more depth, but it sure feels nice to know that you're not the only person to go through X when you're new to the role.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a really good of theory and first hand experience from tech leads of various levels of experience and I really recommend it to everyone who thinks about making this step.

I could easily find many of the issues I personally have to deal with and really identify with the struggle of some of the interviewees - I think it is a must read.

[Rodrigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of interviews with different people with different perspectives and backgrounds about how they manage to be a tech lead in their teams. What does that mean, what are some of their responsibilities and some tips. This book gives you different perspectives about the role. Is not about a set of rules or a guide, but the thoughts and ideas from a different people.

[Juan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book to understand the transition between developer and Tech lead. Constraints, pros cons, challenges with people, with technology...

From my point of view the interviewers are repetitive because more or less all the Tech leads are or were facing the same problem and challenges.

[Darek Napłoszek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of the interviews are going in the same direction, which is understandable, but gets pretty boring fast. In the end reading the "Conclussion" section would suffice to get all the information you need from this book. However some stories were interesting.

[Luboš · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much new for me. I already went through many of the things mentioned there. Mainly just recap. May be worthy at the beginning of the leader career. We have been reading it with my coleagues. I will see how helpful was it for them.

[Ferhat Elmas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several interviews on becoming a technical leader, somehow useful in the beginning but its benefit diminishes quickly.

I would suggest reading a few interviews both from new and senior tech leaders with the conclusions from the author instead of going over all pages.

[Isaac Perez Moncho · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book with some useful insights about managing. Pretty good for being a compilation of interviews but I'm not a fan of those compilations as they don't ease themselves in a structured text that you can extract information from.