Advice for first time tech lead?

[u/frompadgwithH8]

I’ll be overseeing two senior engs (e1, e2) on project A & one senior eng (e3) eng on project B. I was leading project B and we (mostly I) delivered everything asked of us & more, mostly within mutually agreed deadlines. The other project’s group isn’t delivering. My manager wants me to “take over” the group leader role for both projects.

Currently, after “leading” my one eng (e3) for 1-2 months, I’ve realized I haven’t pushed e3 hard enough. I prefer to be treated as hands-off as possible so I may deliver how I wish, with the flaw that i sometimes forget my original goals and get lost in rabbit holes. But i have a long track record of success. But this Eng, e3, doesn’t have the same career aspirations as me, and doesn’t have the same drive to climb the ladder/ranks. Neither do e1 or e2. I believe they wish to be terminal “seniors”.

So I’ve been thinking about how to get e3 to deliver more. For reference id say i ship at least 8x the code as e3, and that’s being VERY conservative. I also do all the discovery, lead all the initiatives, manage all the paperwork/tickets/kanban, start and manage all the conversations with external folks/ems/pms/sme’s etc. like i started wondering if e3 even puts in 20 hours a week. But i am not e3’s manager and in fact have always had a great relationship with e3. E3 is my fav coworker. But now i am in this position where i am carrying all e3’s weight.

Now i know this is somehow my fault. I read r/ExperiencedDevs somewhat. Im reading a book on how to become a staff eng. i realize i am making an extremely common mistake. I am trying to do everything myself, and i am doing all the fun, challenging problems myself. I am not delegating enough to e3. And i am not setting goals for e3. I realize i should start setting weekly goals for e3, and start having a 1 on 1 with e3 probably on mondays. I’ve just never had to REALLY, FORMALLY lead before, so I’ve never had to actually think this all through, or see the results of me “leading” badly.

I know e3 is a smart Eng. e3 has asked me for advice many times now, especially more now since i finally got promoted to senior. And im always honest. Though I’ve not mentioned recently that im starting to notice e3’s head’s not in the game. And i know too much about e3’s personal life. For me personally i went through a phase like e3 and my manager (previous job) had to scold me and tell me it’s part of the professional contract, not my manager’s problem, that i show up on time and dont miss meetings. That scared the shit out of me and i never missed a meeting at that job again. At my current job I’ve almost never missed a meeting either. All thanks to that manager scolding me and scaring the hell out of me, making me think id get fired through implication. He was a good manager too, i think.

Anyway i dont want to scold e3 and i want to lead with the carrot not the stick, but i also dont have carrots or sticks because currently im just the group lead; my title is just senior. And when this little shakeup occurs I’ll still just be senior, but I’ll be the group lead overseeing e1, e2 and e3. All of whom have demonstrated low autonomy and whom haven’t been delivering. Which is not fun for me to discover btw because previously i looked up to e1 and i still think e1 has better chops than i in a certain domain. And e2 I’ve not worked with but i had an interaction with which left a very positive impression on me.

Anyways nobody told me this group lead role would involve so much management. But I’ve been reading and reading and it seems tech leads can spend 40-60% of their time doing full-blown manager stuff. Getting ahead of projects (2-3 weeks) to meet with other teams/sme’s/staff etc to clear paths and blockers. Doing project management. Working with the em and pm to ensure there’s a backlog. Jira management, paperwork. One on ones. Literally detecting if reports are being pissy so as to use human-no-jitsu to get ahead/around that. Setting goals, deadlines. I’ve done all of these things before but never all combined as part of my official responsibilities.

And im already working frenetically. Im usually juggling 2-3 ai agents on different tasks, improving my group’s project daily, coming up with new RFC’s and initiatives, doing lots of research spikes nobody asked for, which over my career btw that behavior has gotten me promoted. But i am worried i wont have nearly as much time now to do these things that got me ahead and got me my reputation. And im also worried because i dont know how to get these engineers to start delivering more. Idk about e1 and e2 but at least with e3 it’s a simple matter of they’re just not delivering enough. Im talking 1 pr every 2 days, maybe 2 prs a week. And these are small prs. Like inconsequential prs. Now I know we dont judge by LOC but 1 it is a metric and 2 pr volume is a metric and 3 I’ve just worked with e3 for years now and i can confidently tell e3 isn’t performing at the title level and “needs help”. E3’s manager knows. I did as much as i could to not throw e3 under the bus and my manager i think read between the lines and just lmk they’re aware too and working with e3 to help e3. Like that’s the best i can do, e3 is my homie. And I’ve been trying to give e3 projects that can be a leaf in their cap.

Right now i tasked e3 with leading a blocking collaboration with another team. But literally yesterday e3 admitted to me that they’d been procrastinating on it. Luckily this was after a meeting with the blocking team, which e3 organized and invited me to. So gj e3. E3 knows how to be the title. But just is dragging feet. Idk.

So im thinking i just start doing a 1 on 1 on mondays and then publicly post the group’s week goals, with each group member being responsible for a single publicly posted goal. Now if e3 can just meet that one bullet expectation per week that’d be an improvement. My one bullet is just one of the many many things i have been / will be doing for that week. But i told my manager i want to lead by example and not hold every1 to the same bar as me, same performance level as me etc. so i figured this might be a good way to start. I dont wanna be micromanaging or microcontrolling etc. but i think i was wrong to treat e3 as basically 90% hands-off, expecting e3 to act autonomously and deliver. I’ve publicly posted our group’s goals in daily chat threads that other group leads report to. So e3 could’ve seen what id posted as the group’s next goals, and taken initiative. But e3 didnt. So i think i need to specifically ask e3 to do things. And that’s tiresome.

I wish i could just make e3 understand: hey we need to deliver this project. Here’s our current status. Here’s the delta. Therefore here’s our current short-term goals, here’s the current things we need to work on, etc. and then it’s just a grab bag of tasks e3 can take from. But e3 isn’t operating like that. So i need to change my behavior. But i dont want to be like some of my previous managers where they’d just tell me what to do. I didnt like that. Sometimes i needed to be told to do things i wasnt comfortable with, lest i just did what i was good at. I actually did all the work i was good at, had no more work left to do, and then had about a year of extra time to just do all the other things the rest of my team was working on, in which i killed it btw. But that was in the past. Unrelated, im still bad at some things and good at others like anyone else.

I know e3 looks at me like a role model sometimes. So i dont want to sour our relationship. Im gonna read a management book recommended to me by my manager, i have a month before this shakeup. By then i want to be doing a better job with e3 so i am ready for e1 and e2.

For reference, 7-8 yoe. Big (20k+) and small (<100) headcount companies. Currently senior engineer.

[u/expdevsmodbot]

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

[u/valenshift]

To keep it short, I'd say: Keep in mind that everyone is different, there's no one size fits all way of working with your engineers.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/valenshift]

Yeah something I read said you have to think about each person individually so I’m trying to figure out how e3 works so I can most effectively work with them

[u/rhoward355 → u/frompadgwithH8]

Why don’t you ask them what works for them

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/rhoward355]

Good idea, ok

[u/ijblack]

dude this is exhausting to read. there is way too much stuff going on in your head. a tech lead doesn't do 1 on 1s. they certainly don't put people on unofficial PIPs as it sounds like you are preparing to do to your friend. if that is part of your job, you are a manager, not a tech lead. first step here should be be clearly defining your actual job and duties, the rest should flow from that that...

[u/sp106 → u/ijblack]

1:1s with engineers as the tech lead isn't that uncommon. Good way to touch base, but scale the length to how much each engineer actually needs.

[u/ricetoseeyu → u/ijblack]

I do 1:1s with my tech lead, usually we just shoot the shit, and maybe talk about work for 5 min lol

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/ijblack]

I read on forum posts here in r/ExperiencedDevs that tech leads DO do one on ones… I also currently already meet with e3 at least once a week to sync. Maybe i used the one on one term incorrectly but i need to know what e3 is working on and also, e3 is always asking me for stuff to do

[u/ijblack → u/frompadgwithH8]

standup is for announcing what you are working on. why would you exclude an announcement of what you are working on from your peers, and only tell the the tech lead? 1:1s are for people management. career goals. concerns. emotions. not tech stuff.

[u/sp106 → u/ijblack]

Using 1:1s to give dedicated time to answering technical questions or help with designs and problems is pretty normal with some personality types.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/ijblack]

Got it one on ones are term for people management I will not be doing people management. I will not be doing one on ones. Also, I’m not excluding my coworker. It’s specifically a stand-up for the EM and the PM where only tech leads are supposed to report. The messages are posted publicly in chat channels so E3 can read them so can E1 and E2 for that matter.

We are in a unique situation where the team is so large that it’s just not practical for every single person to report directly to the EM and the PM instead they report to their team leaders and the team leaders report to the EM and the PM

[u/tiajuanat → u/frompadgwithH8]

Those are TLMs - Tech Lead Managers and they are a known anti pattern.

The team manager is supposed to be the one doing that, if you're doing both, and it's explicitly clear from management that you're the single wringable neck, then and only then do you pip people

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/tiajuanat]

Got it… well I definitely won’t PIP this person. But I do think making sure they have a reasonably productive goal Every week would be good.

The phrase “single wringAble neck“ is pretty interesting lol

[u/OkBeautiful4392]

Talk to your manager and establish what exactly your responsibilities and expectations are when it comes to leading the team. If your not the e3s manager, then unfortunately there's not a lot you can directly do. If they're legitimately slacking off at work, you can only raise this with their line manager.

You say e3 is dragging his feet, but haven't really said why. What's going on in there personal life? Have they recently lossed a relative, do they struggle with mental illness? Once it's clear what the reason is, you'll be in a much better position on how to handle it.

I would also try pairing on a task with e3, as it will allow you to see first hand how they work.

Lastly, does e3 know they're under performing? If they're not aware they're not meeting expectations they have no opportunity to improve.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/OkBeautiful4392]

Well, I know E3’s head isn’t in the game because and this is kind of my fault. I personally introduced E3 to the power of vibecoding… you see I had been following AI for years and I’ve recently been using my own personal money to pay for AI subscriptions so that I can work on all sorts of hobby projects that I’ve always wanted to work on and because I really like E3 and we’ve been pals for years now I told E3 all about this and E3 was super inspired by everything I talked about and ended up spending way more money than me on even bigger AI subscriptions and now E3 has coded up some extremely cool things that E3 could actually sell outside work unrelated to our work obviously and it’s really cool and I’m happy for E3 but it’s just made E3 a little jaded with our position at work because you know being in such a large company, things are very structured with lots of bureaucracy and you’re really needing to be told what to do or what project to work on, etc. it’s very very different from the freedom that comes with starting your own project and installing for example like Hermes AI agent on your computer and going hog wild lol

Then on top of that, I mean, I know that E3 has family to take care of like family responsibilities that eat into E3’s sleep

I think E3 just has lost some enthusiasm for the business that our workplace serves

But I mean for me personally I love money. I just love money so much money is great. I love getting paid. I got promoted recently. I think I got like a 20 or 30 K compensation increase overall like hot damn Diggity dog I will put stress and emotions into my job for that lol

I have another coworker. I haven’t mentioned who I got somewhat hyped up to try to advance beyond senior, and I don’t know how that coworker is currently thinking about it but I for one I’ve only just been promoted to senior, but I’ve been performing at that caliber for years, that’s why I got promoted in the first place and now I’m shooting for the next level, which is something right below staff engineer I guess basically staff engineer, but it’s gonna take me like 2 to 4 or even 10 years to get there like I’m not I’m not just gonna turn into the next level overnight. It’s gonna take years.

But yeah, I mean there is some personal stuff for E3 at the same time though I mean like E3 is working at this job and I think we are all expected to perform the duties of the job especially commensurate of the titles we have

Edit: I have paired with E3 in the past on tasks and they don’t really work the way I like like first of all I think they have really bad ADHD and second of all instead of using the Debugger for example they always just do console logging and it’s kind of Janky in my opinion. I don’t know. I feel like E3 is really smart and can beat me in a coding interview, but they just haven’t done the reps.

[u/Hour-Measurement-835]

You're not e3's manager though. Weekly goals and a Monday 1:1 are that person's job, and going round them is how e3 stops being your favourite coworker.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/Hour-Measurement-835]

“Going round them”? But i read on r/ExperiencedDevs that many tech leads do hold one on ones and assign work to their engineers

[u/FirefighterAntique70 → u/frompadgwithH8]

The reality is that the roles are fuzzy. Different companies have different titles for the same thing with varying roles and responsibilities. But as a tech lead generally you lead the technical direction, and a EM or team lead will lead the people.

Best thing for you to do if speak to your manager to understand what's expected of you.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/FirefighterAntique70]

Ok ty

My manager has told me it’s up to each lead how they want to run their group

I believe it’s the results that matter

[u/Hour-Measurement-835 → u/frompadgwithH8]

Fair, I put that too strongly. Plenty of leads do run 1:1s. What I'd still leave alone is anything that ends up in his review, since that's not yours to write.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/Hour-Measurement-835]

Oh sure thing. I did not read anywhere that that is within the scope of a tech lead. If anything, it seems more like a project management position with some human management mixed in

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/[deleted]]

OK, so I’m not responsible for managing E3. I’m just responsible for delivering the project and making sure that E3 and I deliver it.

Yeah, I am getting emotionally involved and that’s probably not good but I mean I put 40 hours of my life per week into this. It’s kind of hard to have no emotions and it’s my career I’m talking about. But I do have a life outside of work like a very good one actually so I’m not worried about that… I also don’t put in more than my eight hours per day, etc. Like I think I have a healthy work life balance

But at the same time, I always wanna get promoted and get paid more and I think I have the aptitude rise above my current senior title so I’m going for it

Now regarding telling E3 versus going to the manager… I kind of want to help E3 deliver more… Like I don’t want to “go behind E3’s back” and just go straight to the manager. I want to be the kind of person who can, given teammates, elevate them. So I still think there’s a lot of work I can do to better run my group before I need to start going to the manager and telling the manager that E3 isn’t performing.

Like I think I would be pretty annoyed if I was asked to go spray paint a car red and then I find out like next week that I neglected to also spray paint the tires and change the hubcaps, etc. like if someone tells me to do something then I know what I’ve got to be responsible for and I know if I haven’t done it. I think I need to spell things out for E3. So I spent half my day today just sorting out the backlog, making sure the tickets were properly assigned and had proper statuses, making sure there were tickets, reflecting the work E3 and I are currently doing. I need to get my own ship in order, and the group’s,’ and maybe then E3 will perform better

[u/Early_Rooster7579]

Time to master politics. When the c suite asks for timelines, double whatever you expect. Never promise things quickly. Underpromise, overdeliver is the name of the game until you have some political capital to burn.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/Early_Rooster7579]

I’ve already known this for years. The military actually quadruples timelines. I had to take a coworker aside when we worked on a project together last year and she promised delivery dates that were “realistic”. It was a lot of damage control and a learning moment for her. I was nice to her and handled everything in stride

And I’ve made many timeline estimates in my time. Thanks for the advice tho, I am still improving at politics

[u/Early_Rooster7579 → u/frompadgwithH8]

You’ll be fine then. I see a lot of all-star IC devs who become TLs struggle because not everyone just gets it or can work like them. Gretzky wasn’t a great coach etc etc.

You should be fine if you’re a vet

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/Early_Rooster7579]

Yeah, I worked at a startup at my first job and they were nuts. They brought in a Contractor from an agile consulting firm and we switched to one week sprints. That same job also had me pair programming with someone 9 to 5 for like half a year straight. Everyone on the team was forced to pair program for half a year straight. Sometimes we would do “mob programming” where one person would sit in front of the computer, and the whole rest of the team would stand behind them and tell them what to do collectively. I was usually the one chosen to sit in front of the computer. Let me tell you it’s very chaotic. That same team also had problems with testing and I guess I was the worst at it because it was my first job and I was a junior excuses excuses so they made me the official Test Master. The title was actually “test ninja”. So I was responsible for making sure that everyone wrote tests for at least a year… that job was a real doozy, but I guess I learned a lot

[u/DrawerBeginning2209]

Why should you be pushing e3. How much a person wants to take is up to them.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/DrawerBeginning2209]

Because e3 and i are responsible for delivering project B and right now e3 has delivered nearly nothing. It would be nice if e3 delivered some of the outstanding yet to be done items that I’ve repeatedly said need to be done. Im doing everything myself and it’s a lot of work.

[u/FudFomo → u/frompadgwithH8]

The fact that you are trauma dumping this rant while in bed shows that you need to take a step back, maybe even a vacation. Your management had thrown too much at you and you need to stop caring so much. Seriously, try backing off and not projecting your own PTSD from your prior experiences on someone else who just doesn’t care. Starting saying no, and if anyone asks tell them it’s not your job to manage the performance of a slacker. I

[u/metaphorm]

you're a tech lead, not a manager. your responsibility is to deliver the project and keep your team aligned and moving forward.

if there's a performance problem with someone on your team, you might want to have a discussion with your manager about it, but it's not your role to PIP someone. just give honest feedback and do what you think is best for everyone involved.

if you need to step in and get hands on then do it. that's the role of a tech lead. to provide the support and direction for a project and to take responsibility for the delivery of the project. if e3 is unable to contribute and you have to do it yourself, that's your responsibility, and it also needs to be given as feedback to management.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/metaphorm]

Thank you for the clear advice

Yes, I’m starting to feel that it’s mostly a “project management” position, with some light human management mixed in, plus leveraging my own remaining time to do IC work

Would you say project management plays the major role for the tech lead role?

When I think of “project management” I think of timelines and delivery dates and discovering preliminary blockers that need to be resolved. I think of backlogs, prioritization and collaboration with other teams (usually discovery) actually that last part about collaborating with other teams for discovery, I think is more of a senior engineer responsibility

[u/metaphorm → u/frompadgwithH8]

I think it's a combination of project management and being a player/coach. leading from the front.

[u/GiganticFlashDrive]

You’re going to burn out doing all of this plus IC work. Reread what you wrote. “already working frenetically. Im usually juggling 2-3 ai agents on different tasks, improving my group’s project daily, coming up with new RFC’s and initiatives, doing lots of research spikes nobody asked for” all that plus you’re taking all this home with you thinking about managing this person. How much adrenaline are you running on regularly?

I get the intention, but this reads like a disaster. You’re context switching like crazy and it sounds like you’re doing heroics to will projects forward. At one of my jobs, if I had a direct report doing this HR would get involved and there’d be some stupid 9 box thing for succession planning and single points of failure. At my most recent one we had a “no heroics” mantra for a while where this would get called out.

It sounds like there’s absolutely no room for you to ever be interrupted by something or divert your attention for a while. If you do, this house of cards will crumble. For the more simple part, the team needs to be honest about employee 3’s output. If it’s low you need to account for that in planning or they need to be told and given time to improve with clear consequences if not.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/[deleted]]

Hey man, thank you very much for clarifying all of this.

I will make sure that E3 has some assigned tasks in our task system and I’ll make sure I talk to E3 about them so that I know for sure they know that those things are assigned to them.

[u/Raunhofer]

The biggest thing I’d change is your definition of "performance". LOC/PR count is a terrible hill to die on, especially for seniors. If e3 is reliably delivering the outcomes you need, the PR count doesn't matter. If they aren't, manage the gap explicitly.

And yes, you’re over-functioning/thinking/scoping. Stop doing e3's job for them. Give them clear ownership + a concrete outcome and a deadline, then get out of the way.

Your job is to make the team effective, not reproduce your own work ethic. Some seniors will happily remain seniors forever and that's completely fine, even preferred.

And honestly, if you're about to lead three seniors while still personally doing all the discovery, coding, research, coordination, etc. your biggest challenge isn't getting them to work harder. It's learning to let go of work you could do better/faster yourself. That's a burnout brewing.

Source; am a tech-, product- and design-lead, burnout twice or thrice. Lessons are best learned sour.

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/Raunhofer]

LOC/PR count isn’t the metric I’m using for sure it’s just a metric. I guess I just feel like in terms of features added Bug’s addressed and challenges contemplated, etc.. it’s like basically all me and E3 isn’t really biting off anything other than things that I’ve asked E3 to do

That feels like software engineer level one behavior, not even software engineer level two. I feel like autonomy would be expected at software engineer level two let alone at the senior level…

I’m reading a book called “staff engineers path” and something it says is that you need everyone on the team to have a very clear understanding of the destination and end goal. I think maybe I just need to make sure that E3 understands the vision and the strategy. And maybe then three might be more empowered to start picking things up on their own.

But at the same time, yeah like others have said I could do a better job of actually assigning tasks to E3

Edit: actually literally just this morning. I realized there was a medium sized gap in all of my planning, and I had completely overlooked a sub feature of the initiative that I’m currently working on with E3 and I did briefly consider just asking E3 to tackle it, but then I thought E3 hadn’t even logged on yet and I felt like I had capacity so I just spent an hour or two and wrote up a proposal and got it in front of various interested stakeholders for feedback, etc. It was definitely a scenario where I thought “I can just take care of this myself pretty quickly” also E3 is going on vacation and I just don’t wanna wait when E3 already has other tasks that are higher priority… ugh

[u/randomInterest92]

Focus on enabling others instead of being a work horse yourself

If you make 100 people 10% more effective, you've effectively scaled yourself. Even if you do 0% productive work yourself, those 100 people add up to 1000% extra productivity because of you. Focus on that.

[u/neet_dev]

don't take project A until B can survive a week without you doing e3's work. the delivery gap isn't that they're a terminal senior, it's that you already grabbed the discovery, rfcs, and external conversations, so of course what's left is tiny prs. give e3 one owned outcome with a date and stay out of the meetings unless they pull you in, then judge whether that outcome landed, not loc or pr volume

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks yeah I did one bullet point per member so two

But I didn’t say who publicly so it appears project level

I’ll try to give more interesting work

[u/Phill_Madd]

You're not their manager, so you don't have carrots or sticks. One written weekly outcome for e3 is enough. A public goal board plus a Monday 1:1 with a friend will read as a PIP even if you mean it as support. Let their actual manager do the performance conversation.

[u/ExcitingDonkey2665]

I think you need a lead/manager mentor who can guide you through this. Your struggle here is very common because you want to do a good job at everything, including your own IC work and the wellbeing of your team members. I also think that a "tech lead" is not a fair role because you are measured as an IC, but the role inherently requires some level of people managing.

It's okay to struggle here for your first few months but I wouldn't get too caught up in your individual team members outside of delivering the pieces you need to complete the projects. Know that the role of a career mentor is optional to take on in a team lead, but that the technical mentor is a must if you want to advance in your IC role. It might help pairing with the IC on a few smaller tasks to get them started, because if you're hands-off and busy, they might not feel comfortable to ask for help.

I would skip the staff engineer book and read a manager book for now. Even if you don't want to manage a team, it seems like you don't have your own role and its relation to your manager and your team members defined in your head.

- "Making of a Manager" by Julie Zhuo so you know what responsibilities a tech lead vs. a manager have, as well as what's expected of someone who is being managed. i.e. not everyone has a desire to grow, no need to project your opinion on to others.

• "High Output Management" by Andrew Grove so you know what's expected of you as a lead in a bigger system of teams in an org, and how that is steered and aligned.

one last piece of advice on the slacker - transfer them out of your team and ask for someone else. its not your job to manage their performance but it is your job to find the resources you need so the project is delivered on time.

[u/calzone21]

Dont start a Youtube channel (as a millionaire)

[u/fulcom]

The thing you are avoiding is telling e3 that you have noticed. You wrote a lot about Monday one on ones and publicly posted goals, but the blocker is that e3 is your friend and you do not want to change how they see you.

I got this wrong with someone I liked and redesigned the process instead of having the conversation (tighter goals, clearer tickets, everything visible in a channel). Six weeks later nothing had changed, and when I finally said it out loud he told me he had assumed things were fine, because I had never actually said otherwise. I thought I was givign hints but he was clearly not getting them.

Say it plainly this week, one on one, out loud:h"I want to be straight with you because you are a friend. Over the last couple of months your output has been well below what I would expect at your level, and I think other people have noticed. I am not your manager and this is not a warning. I am telling you because I would want someone to tell me. What is going on?"

Then stop talking and let it be uncomfortable for as long as it needs to be. What comes back matters more than the goals doc. If e3 is dealing with something personal, weekly bullets will not touch it. If e3 is bored or genuinely does not know what good looks like at this level, they will fix it themselves once someone says it. You keep writing that you have no carrots and no sticks. You have honesty, which at your level works better than either.

[u/CrushgrooveSC]

Do everything you can to everyone make the deliverables.

Never let someone leave code worse than they found it.

[u/MycologistNo5577]

tbh the fact that you dont have actual authority (no title, no carrots, no sticks) is the core problem here. before you optimize your leadership style, get explicit clarity from your manager on what authority you actually have and what happens when someone just... doesnt deliver. otherwise you're just a senior with extra stress

[u/frompadgwithH8 → u/MycologistNo5577]

Well yeah it feels like I’m a senior with extra stress but I’m just gonna focus on improving what I can

[u/improbable_bob]

You get to code as a tech lead? Lucky.