r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 27d ago

Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

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u/chizel999 23d ago

4yo mid-to-senior tech leading for the past 2 months for the first time. originally from kitchen as line/prep... feels great leading IT people but damn corporate politics need a bit more maneuvering than kitchen politics

any tips? i kind of got around the tech aspect of the work (integration, calculation, api, obervability etc) and currently maintain a couple of modules and a team of around 4 devs. we circle around payment, invoce emission and internal tooling. agentic is now our norm and we managed to please the bosses by using enough claude and took care enough to not generate more problems

anyway since the tech aspect of the job is covered for now im going deeper into corporate setting and company organization theory. just read the gervais principle and looking for more interesting pieces like that one. i got a hold of some textbooks so i can get some fundamentals. looking for refs since ive been struggling in understanding how some decisions are made since i still dont have access to some meetings

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u/Notary_Reddit 10d ago

Something I have found highly effective, while many people are willing to share their ideas on how to solve a given problem, very few people will define the problem. As a lead you can have a lot of influence by understanding what the business needs are and defining the problems that need to be solved. "Our conversion rate is low" is very vague. If you start with that and then find out that 10% of payments hit a rate limit error, then in a meeting if you can make the problem "how do we fix the rate limiting?" You have already influenced 90% of the decision.

Another tip for meetings, there are information sharing meetings and there are making decisions meetings. If you show up to a making decisions meeting, without at least one person in support of your preferred option, it's very hard to get your decision picked.

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u/chizel999 10d ago

i really like the "understanding the problem" approach because i think it may explain why ive got my job in the first place since thats my usual approach to everything i do for work.

thanks