What do you think is the best way to select tech. Leads? Where I work we are trying to do better at this. In the past, it was kind of up to supervisors, and they just asked people if they wanted to be a lead. Recently, we tried doing an internal job announcement and treated it kind of like a promotional opportunity, with in person interviews (even though it is not a promotion here). In the end, both stratgies have pros and cons, and the general consensus is that the interviews were the better option. I'm curious to know what you think, and what some of your experiences are in this area.
I've built and managed Engineering teams at companies large and small. Currently @ Pusher growing a team who build the world's best realtime web messaging platform.
Great question. I think we are at a similar stage. The most important thing IMO is to make sure the possibility of being a lead is clearly open to everyone. We also like to run short projects that let people try on the tech lead hat without committing to being a team lead forever.
Internal job adverts sounds interesting - is that working out?
The internal job announcements were a mixed bag for selecting new tech. Leads for us. Everyone involved told me that they liked the process better than what we had done in the past. It seemed more fair, and it was easier for people to make their intentions clear (i.e. in the past, if a supervisor didn't know someone wanted to be a lead, they'd get passed over; now they could apply for it, because it was pretty clearly announced to all). The big problem for us, was that we had 4 positions, and 3 people applied, and none of them were selected. 2 of the applicants weren't really qualified, and the third was already a lead on a different project. We are about to go through this again, and I want to avoid the situation of not selecting anyone again.
I'm not sure if we can set it up to have tech leads hold the position for shorter durations, with the way we are currently structured, but it is something worth thinking about. I like the idea of people not being tied to being a lead long term, especially if they find they don't like that role.
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What do you think is the best way to select tech. Leads? Where I work we are trying to do better at this. In the past, it was kind of up to supervisors, and they just asked people if they wanted to be a lead. Recently, we tried doing an internal job announcement and treated it kind of like a promotional opportunity, with in person interviews (even though it is not a promotion here). In the end, both stratgies have pros and cons, and the general consensus is that the interviews were the better option. I'm curious to know what you think, and what some of your experiences are in this area.
Great question. I think we are at a similar stage. The most important thing IMO is to make sure the possibility of being a lead is clearly open to everyone. We also like to run short projects that let people try on the tech lead hat without committing to being a team lead forever.
Internal job adverts sounds interesting - is that working out?
The internal job announcements were a mixed bag for selecting new tech. Leads for us. Everyone involved told me that they liked the process better than what we had done in the past. It seemed more fair, and it was easier for people to make their intentions clear (i.e. in the past, if a supervisor didn't know someone wanted to be a lead, they'd get passed over; now they could apply for it, because it was pretty clearly announced to all). The big problem for us, was that we had 4 positions, and 3 people applied, and none of them were selected. 2 of the applicants weren't really qualified, and the third was already a lead on a different project. We are about to go through this again, and I want to avoid the situation of not selecting anyone again.
I'm not sure if we can set it up to have tech leads hold the position for shorter durations, with the way we are currently structured, but it is something worth thinking about. I like the idea of people not being tied to being a lead long term, especially if they find they don't like that role.