What Does It Take To Be a Successful Tech Lead?

Earlier this year, we interviewed a few dozen tech leads and asked them this simple question:

“What does success look like as a tech lead?”

Across small and large companies, infrastructure and product teams, enterprise and customer-facing companies, people shared that being a good tech lead means some version of: good execution with a team that’s happy.

On every team and at every company, tech lead roles can vary substantially. Tech leads can be managers. They can be mid-level engineers dipping their toe in “people stuff.” They can be the most senior engineer who wants to be a tech lead indefinitely.

In our interviews, we found that because the role is so amorphous, people in tech lead roles really craved something to hold onto. “What else should I be doing?” “Am I even doing a good job?” “How can I figure out what I don’t know?”

So in this post, we dig a bit deeper into this question:

What makes a good tech lead?

Below, we share with you shared attributes of good tech leads and some quotes from our interviews. As you read through this post, keep in mind that no one wakes up one day with all these skills — fully ready to be a tech lead. Especially as tech leads first transition into the role, it’s expected that…