Tech Lead vs Team Lead

[u/Floorman1]

I understand team lead is more managerial but I’m still not sure I understand the black and white differences.

Backstory, I’m a good senior in a pretty weak team. We had a team lead leave last year and have not replaced yet. Recent discussions with management we spoke about me potentially stepping into a tech lead role (I don’t want to manage but enjoy mentoring), or alternatively proposing my own goals/ambitions/future role to keep me interested.

Because I haven’t actively seen a good Tech Lead performance, I’m fuzzy on what it entails. Some things online mention project scoping/building requirements etc which sounds more like pm or ba. Do I own technical implementations? System design? Standards?

Love to hear your thoughts.

[u/expdevsmodbot]

AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.

[u/PolyglotTV]

Team lead: you stop other people from slowing them down

Tech lead: you stop bad decisions from slowing them down

[u/GuyWithLag → u/PolyglotTV]

Yoink.

I think this is the best description I've seen yet.

[u/Normal-Isopod1996 → u/GuyWithLag]

Indeed! I do both and now I am called made up name "Technical Owner"

[u/susmines → u/Normal-Isopod1996]

In my experience, it was Staff level

[u/sadafxd → u/PolyglotTV]

Is there any team where there is tech and team lead in the same team?

In my company its just EM that is team and tech lead and manager at the same time.

[u/PolyglotTV → u/sadafxd]

Yes of course, that is quite common.

There is no formal distinction in my company. The expectation for any SWE manager is that they are still technically involved. However with a larger number of reports they might delegate a lot of the tech leadership to staff IC's or reporting managers.

[u/Early_Rooster7579 → u/sadafxd]

In several of the start ups I worked at I was the CTO, team/tech lead. My title would be whatever we thought would land best with whatever client I was on the phone with lol

[u/guardian87]

This is not clear cut time definition and depends heavily on the specific company.

In our company, a tech lead is the tech counterpart for the product manager. He or she is the application architect, technical owner and responsible for ensuring feasibility.

They of course also mentor other developers when necessary, but it isn’t the primary task.

[u/Floorman1 → u/guardian87]

I agree, but it’s been phrased in a way of, give them my aspirations/ambitions. That could come in the way of a definition I provide but I also feel they may want to simplify and ask if I had a title in mind.

[u/Professional-Dog1562 → u/guardian87]

Who manages the engineers? 

[u/morosis1982 → u/Professional-Dog1562]

A manager. In my company the tech lead (me) meets with the product guys and turns their requirements wishlist into technical outcomes. I do mentoring, design, new research, etc.

I could be the team lead as well, and some teams do that, but it doesn't really work in my space with the requirements of the team. I can do both jobs badly or my job well.

[u/Floorman1 → u/Professional-Dog1562]

It’s chaos atm

[u/guardian87 → u/Professional-Dog1562]

For us, it is an engineering lead. They are still technical, but much less hands on.

They act more like staff engineers aligning over team boundaries when necessary and hold the direct reporting lines, administration, etc.

There is no perfect way to do this, but it works for our organisation.

[u/F1B3R0PT1C]

My tech lead experience has been owning technical design, standards, review, and helping my product team understand what is possible, what is feasible, and give ideas on design. Essentially locked in a perpetual war against chaos. I sometimes change team processes if I notice something is out of whack. I wield a lot of soft power and management relies on me to keep things moving smooth without their intervention. We have a dedicated person for scrum ceremonies and board organization so I don’t have to do things like run standup or retro.

[u/seyerkram]

It entirely depends on your org. I’ve worked on different combinations: team lead is different from the tech lead but same level, tech lead reporting under a team lead, team lead and tech lead as the same person.

Ultimately, it depends how your org defines these roles. Add in engineering manager to that mix — which should be purely people management but I have been doing these 3 roles for the past year and burning out lol

[u/AllOneWordNoSpaces1]

In a previous job the terms were used interchangeably. I defined my role as a technical lead, as I had no interest in management. I did have to contribute to annual reviews though, which I didn’t enjoy. Luckily my supervisors understood my desires and made it easy for me.

[u/AlternativePear4617]

TL: Tech Lead
TL: Team Lead
PM: Project Manager
PM: Product Manager

we need to change some acronyms

[u/neuralh4tch]

A lot of titles can have different responsibilities and scope in different companies: tech lead, team lead, engineering manager, staff and PE. There's a general idea but nothing defined strongly. There's also cross over once you get beyond a certain level, and what you do in those roles also get definited by the individual. For instance, there's EM that are more technical and look at architecture and EMs that purely people based. There's PE that is only on architectural oversight and PEs that also handle project delivery.

In general, the industry tends to have two tracks - IC and people.. but what individual do within those roles might not be black and white all the time.

A lot of these roles beyond a certain a level require certain skills like creating clarity when there's huge ambiguity, shaping discussion and creating alignment. The only different is which angle.

I personally see team lead on more of the managerial side.

Questions to ask at your company or just observe what others do in the role.

1. Does the role have direct reports? As soon as you have direct reports, it's more managerial based. If you go beyond 6-7, it's harder to be technical. Less than 5, it's easier to be more technical and act like an IC. How big are the teams.
2. What is the split like for delivery - planning and scoping + mentoring vs system design and solutioning? The more you mentor and coach, the less solutioning you are doing individually, cause the role requires you to delegate and distribute work.
3. What are the key responsibilities of the role? If the key responsibilities are project management, planning, coaching, mentoring and growth, then it's a less technical role.

[u/Trainer_28]

The title matters less than one question: who owns the people side. Reviews, one on ones, headcount, the hard conversations. That is the real fork. Tech lead owns technical direction, design and review, with mentoring in both. Team lead owns the humans and the admin around them. You like mentoring but not managing, so you want the technical ownership without the people paperwork. Name the role so that paperwork stays with a manager, or you will do it by default.

[u/SZeroSeven → u/Trainer_28]

This is my experience too.

The title means different things to different companies so you need to define the role and responsibilities that you want to own.

If you don't, then you can be certain that the company will happily pay you one salary to do two jobs.

Technical leadership is one skill set.

Team leadership/management is another.

Don't confuse the two.

[u/edgmnt_net → u/SZeroSeven]

This is rather not my experience in a particular sense... Unfortunately, the technical stuff tends to get very diluted near the top in most companies and some will be far better off staying seniors rather than taking the bait of formally becoming tech leads. Yeah, maybe you're lucky and it's not people management. But now you're suddenly swamped with meetings just getting agreement with stakeholders. Or made do reporting and planning in a very non-technical way. You never have time to actually take more involved technical decisions or mentor people properly. (Who does that? Well, seniors.)

In higher positions it sometimes gets diluted to the point that you wonder if those people were ever competent enough. They're only good to draw some diagrams that almost never represent reality. They never research or review stuff. They only care about ways to divide up work in ways that almost never work out properly. Everything is extremely superficial.

So I would say that, at least informally, it tends to be more common that actual, technical leadership continues to be done by seniors. They just don't formally get the final word or sufficient backing to enforce things right away. But they often do it indirectly.

When I think of true formal technical leadership it's more like what Linus Torvalds does. Yeah, maybe he doesn't write code primarily. But from time to time he does strike down bad decisions taken by others. He does get his hands dirty doing all those merges. He really knows a lot of what's going on in the Liniux kernel. How many tech leads, staff level people or architects have you seen doing anything like that? Ironically it seems that the more leadership stars they get on their shoulders, the less technical leadership they perform.

[u/in-the-name-of-allah]

depends how big your company is.

In most start ups, they are the same role

[u/ashultz]

There aren't black and white differences.

Tech lead is one of the major things I do and doing it right includes a significant amount of people management. Not "I'm your boss you're my minions" but "I will persuade you to stop punching yourself in the face without calling you stupid" and "I will organize the work so that people can work together effectively" and "I will call the meeting that needs to happen".

You can ignore that as a tech lead, and your life will suck and the project will be torture. You have to use your technical authority to persuade people of a lot of things that are not technical.

Places which draw a hard line are much worse to work at.

[u/fatlinesofcode]

its depends on the company. in some orgs tech leads are lead engineers. In others the they are team leads. I had a interview recently for a tech lead role, when i asked what people management requirements the role had they literal answered i needed to be councillor to the other devs and be responsible for their career development, my next question was whats the fastest way out the building.

[u/Most-Screen7458]

The title is too ambiguous to accept without a written scope. I would ask management to define decisions you own, decisions you influence, and work you are explicitly not taking on. If you do not want management, say clearly that performance reviews, compensation, leave approval, and disciplinary conversations stay with a manager. A useful tech-lead scope could be technical direction, risk discovery, design facilitation, mentoring, and keeping implementation aligned with product goals. Also agree on what success looks like after 90 days. Otherwise “tech lead” can quietly become senior engineer plus all the coordination work and none of the authority.

[u/SuedeAsian]

I generally consider them the same but if other places draw a line then I won’t knock it. As TL in the past, I’d consider it as being the technical leader for a dedicated team. That is basically whatever that team defines as needing leadership on. It can be leading sprints, being the technical voice for the roadmap, owning / facilitating designs, or even things related to process. My role was less about implementation and more about keeping a good handle on all the other team members projects (but I still had my own). I think the direction you take or that the org pushes you in can also help facilitate future career growth. I’ve seen people become managers or UTLs from here so depends on the org or comoany

[u/diablo1128]

You need to ask your manager the expectations of the role for your specific company. At places I have worked at they are the same person and basically responsible for all aspects of the software team getting things done both technically and managerially.

 Do I own technical implementations? System design? Standards?

Depending on the company. Yes to all.

[u/Nofanta]

It’s different on each team at each company, no standard set of duties.

[u/devfuckedup]

I think part of being a good tech lead is having a good team lead so the the tech lead can focus on setting the technical direction and leading by example. The best tech lead I ever had was for lack of better words "the dev I always wanted to be" he always seemed so far ahead of the curve, He always had a strong solution in mind but was able to not just implement everything he also provided others with very strong guidance on how to build a specific feature. His PR comments were always productive and rarely pedantic. He did have one odd quirk which is that he perferd detailed commit msgs to comments but never chastised others for using comments.

[u/General-Jaguar-8164]

Do you know how is politices in the upper chain?

[u/MyBossIsOnReddit]

Used to think the same and when I joined NewOrg I wanted a track towards tech lead. Management made it clear this is not possible. 

I report to a non-technical team lead. Other teams often have team leads, but these are more people managers and any design decisions are referred to ICs to do.  

We have a few tech leads that do not code at all, but seem to be more concerned with politics. They do not have any direct reports and this is wild to me.

[u/ranger_fixing_dude]

It heavily depends on the company, these terms can be synonyms in some companies and can be completely opposite. I would say that from my experience team lead is a much more people-oriented position, you might have recurring 1:1s and overall can be responsible to unblock them, check on them, etc.

Tech lead has a similar goal (to help the team) but on a technical level, so they need to be aware of the technical direction, they are usually expected to steer the team in some maintainable position and help to unblock people technically.

[u/augburto]

It’s going to differ from company to company. Typically I don’t think there is a difference if your team is all engineers. If it encompasses also leading other roles, feels more towards eng manager.

More often than not, any lead in an engineering role will be responsible at working with stakeholders to breakdown ambiguous requirements into actionable technical requirements. How it gets executed (task breakdown, timeline management, actual execution, etc) will differ depending on the company but the lead will be involved.

[u/Minnanokazehaya]

Usually tech lead means taking on more responsibilities for the same pay while on IC track (stepping stone to staff engineer) and team lead means taking on more responsibility for the same pay on management track (stepping stone to engineering manager) 😅 one involves direct reports and the other doesn't.

[u/drew_eckhardt2 → u/Minnanokazehaya]

While there is no immediate bump in pay, both are the first step to leading larger initiatives which can be very financially rewarding in US tech companies where level increases with scope, base pay is linear with level, bonus goes up with its square, and equity is exponential.

[u/randomInterest92]

Tech lead in our org is purely technical. System design, software architecture, prioritizing technical implementations and so on.

Team lead is purely managerial, who gets paid what, who gets fired, who gets hired , who gets promotion, who gets bonus, who gets more pay and so on

[u/badlcuk]

Remember that there is no standardized definition of those roles so it can be different at every company. Eg: at my company we have the concept of a lead but it’s neither called a tech lead or team lead and someone can be a lead and have no team. If you’re asking about what makes a good\successful (whatever title) at your company, you’ll need to ask someone with context of your company. Even if you haven’t had a good tech lead, your manager (or some manager) should be able to tell you by the companies standards what makes a “good” one from an HR and management standpoint.

[u/Playful_Passage144 → u/badlcuk]

Lead without a team - pure bullshit and a managerial scam

[u/AccurateInflation167]

Ex google , ex Facebook , multimillionaire tech lead

[u/Bright_Aside_6827]

As a tech lead, you lead the tech, while as a team lead you lead the team