My title is Engineering Team Lead, but what does that
actually mean, what do I actually do?
I am Project Manager
Nearly every business request impacts multiple components, front
end, back end, and various other subsystems.
I receive business requirements from the Product Manager and break down
the request into workable chunks. I translate business requirements to engineer
speak, and create "ready to be worked" on Jira tickets. I make sure each
ticket has as much background information as possible so the individual working
on this ticket can have some perspective of the larger picture. When multiple Jira tickets are required to
implement a business change, I have organize them so tickets are put into the
sprints without unmet external dependencies. In order to do this, often I have to actually dig into the code bases, roughly plan out the changes that would be required, sometimes testing some rough ideas before I can confidently write a Jira ticket. It is either that, or every ticket is going to be an “Investigate”, which often results in no actual value to customers.
Most of the time there are also multiple
projects running simultaneously. This means I have to mentally organize and
prioritize them into our sprints, manage their progress against their due
dates, and communicate both up and down to make sure everyone is on the same
page. I also run all of our backlog grooming, sprint planning, and retrospective
sessions. I collect metrics on team as well as our product performance, track
and plot them over time so the team can continue to be diligent on improving
quality.
I am Gate Keeper
Since I’ve been at the company the longest, and know how all
the small tiny gears fit together to make this giant colossus work, I review
almost every bit of code that is in our team’s various repositories. While
other reviewers pick out style or syntax improvement opportunities, I am often
the person who discovers larger issues in logic, data flow, deployment
considerations, or sometimes simply the wrong implementation in the wrong place.
In order to do this, I often have to dig deep into the code base, thinking
about what a good technical solution would be, and then evaluate that against
the diff I am actually reading. Of
course I don’t always come up with the best solution. I am ecstatic when I see
a better solution implemented, but even then, there are often rough edges that
must be smoothed out before it can go to production. Larger code reviews have
to wait for the weekend because it is the only quiet time I have, it is either
that, or staying late at the office long after everyone has left.
I work on guiding our team towards higher test coverage, more
robust fault tolerance, better documentation and easier to read code. Rarely am
I able to just accept a patch as is, since often my younger team members due to
lack of knowledge or experience have written code that would have broken one
part of the system or another. When something fails in production, upper management
come to me to demand answers. As such, I suppose these efforts are as much for self
preservation as it is for team improvement. We do also require two reviewers
approval before any change is accepted, on a small team, it pretty much means I
have to look at every diff.
I am Quality
Assurance
After code changes are finalized and landed on the master
branch, individual contributors are happy to move on to the next bit of work. I
on the other hand, have to do another two rounds of checks, once when the
changes are released to our staging environment, and a final round when it makes
it to production. Thankfully most of the
time these checks do not reveal problems, but there certainly has been cases
when bugs have been discovered due to subtle environment differences.
I am Customer Support
When something breaks in production, other teams and upper
management come to me for answers. So even
when I am not on triage duty for the week, I am still on. This can be as innocuous
as a “can we do this?” question. This will usually lead me to dig into our code
bases, looking at logs, thinking about potential conflicts with other systems,
and then offering an answer or alternative solutions. It may seem innocent, but
a few of these questions in a day, and there will be little time to do anything
else. Have I mentioned that we have offices around the globe and operate in
numerous time zones? Yes, so that means in order to provide a high level of
service to all of my team’s customers (not only the end clients, but the other
offices that depend on our services), I find myself responding to
email/slack/Jira messages at all sorts of odd times of the day.
I am Mentor, Psychiatrist,
and Jury
I have a lot of young developers on my team. Some find the
day to day work dull, others try to come up with complicated solutions. I try
to mentor and help them achieve their best, offering support and guidance along
the way. When a team member is not engaged, I have to figure out what the issue
is, and how I can get them back on track. I do this by day to day working alongside
my team members, with lunch time conversations, and with my bi-weekly one on
ones with them. I am always listening, I
am always watching. When it comes time to do performance reviews, I have to assemble
everything I know about a person’s contributions, and try to come up with constructive
advice to help improve their future performance.
I am Visionary and
Architect
On top of all the day to day work, I also have to keep up
with the industry’s latest trends, in order to offer my team a glimpse of the future
to look forward to. This means I spend my holidays and weekends reading and
learning about new tech that’s always coming out faster than I can
consume. I honestly wish I could be in
the Matrix and just download the latest flight program to a Huey directly to my
brain. I also have to think about how to improve our processes, technology, and
architecture in order to better our customer experience, both internal and
external.
I am Talent
Acquisition
Since our team’s small size often causes problems in availability
of resources, we’ve ramped up hiring. This means I need to go through resumes of potential
candidates and go through rounds of interviews. Thankfully a team member has
stepped up to significantly reduce my effort in this task. Ultimately however, if
I hire someone who doesn’t meet expectations, then I will have another problem
on my hands.
These are the things that I do nearly on a daily basis. Most
days I feel like I am being pulled in a hundred different directions. It is exhausting.
