One of the most common paths to becoming a technical leader is to have been “one of them”, part of the technical team in a purely technical role. Transitioning to a management or leadership position is not a simple feat; it requires a lot of learning, trial and error, and adaptation.
From management theory to interpersonal skills, if you are like me, you may not have explicitly planned to develop these abilities. Suddenly, you find yourself promoted to a management position or starting a new job as a technical leader after years in a senior software development role. There’s a crucial aspect of this transition that many new tech leads overlook: