Imagine a beautiful old house, with a thousand fixes.
The plumbing works on odd days. The paint almost matches – if you squint. The light switch is okay – if you don’t touch it too fast.
Everything technically works. But none of it flows. You can feel the patches, the mismatched fixes, and the absence of a unifying vision.
That’s what a project feels like without a strong tech lead. Code ships, features work, but something’s off — and over time, the cracks start to show.
A great tech lead brings more than technical expertise. They bring cohesion, clarity, and beauty. They make the system feel like it was designed, not just assembled.
Whether you're considering a tech lead role, or just want to understand what great tech leads actually do, here’s what makes them essential.
Tech lead vs. engineering manager (yes, they are different!)
At first, these two roles can seem almost the same. But they're far from it.
Let’s say engineering managers (EMs) focus mostly on people and processes. They do things like:
- Hire new engineers
- Run one-on-ones, team meetings, etc.
- Give career feedback
- Handle performance reviews
- And talk to other departments and stakeholders
They also think about strategy and long-term plans, like where the team or product should be a year from now.
Tech leads, on the other hand, focus on the technical side of the team’s work today, next month, and a few months ahead. They:
- Guide engineers through tricky problems
- Coach juniors on writing better code
- Help the team adopt new tools or systems
- Review code, design system architecture, and make sure everything fits together
You can think of the tech lead as the art director of a project.
Where the EM focuses on growing the team, the tech lead makes sure the art (the technical work) looks and feels like one piece, not a messy collage. Both are needed, but they steer different parts of the ship.
Why tech leads matter
Imagine you have a big garden. You ask a few friends to help you get it ready for a wedding next summer. Each friend works on a different part:
- One plants roses
- Another plants sunflowers
- And another builds a vegetable patch
At the end, you don’t have a unified garden — you have four random gardens smashed together.
Without a tech lead, the same happens to software teams:
- Different parts of the system work differently – and feel differently
- Some engineers use one approach, others use another
- Bugs start to appear because parts of a system don't "talk" to each other well
- And no one has a full technical picture
Without a unifying vision, there isn’t a single product. There’s just a collection of disconnected parts.
That's why, even without an official title, someone almost always steps up. In small startups, it might be the CTO. In others, it could be a senior engineer. Without this person, the product feels stitched together – instead of intentionally designed.
Core skills of a tech lead
You might think a great engineer would automatically make a great tech lead, but that's not true.
Being a tech lead isn't just about writing amazing code. It's about working with people, guiding a team, and being able to step out and see a bigger picture.
A great tech lead needs to:
- Communicate well: explain ideas clearly, especially when people get stuck
- Be empathetic: understand when someone needs help, not just when the code is a nightmare
- Be strategic: think about the best long-term solutions, not just the most exciting ones
- Delegate well: trust others instead of doing everything themselves
- Balance perfection and progress: knowing when "good enough" is the best that can be done
These skills don't automatically come with being a strong engineer. In fact, deep technical work (the kind of work engineers love) is often solitary and quiet. Tech leads must step out of that comfort zone and step into constant conversations.
Promoting a great engineer won't make magic happen overnight. It takes work to build these people skills, just like learning a new programming language. Or any language, for that matter.
Challenges tech leads face
Taking on a tech lead role isn’t easy. The following are some of the biggest challenges they deal with:
1. Learning to let go
A strong engineer’s first instinct will probably be to fix things themselves. Likely, they’ve built a career on being the person who jumps in, helps others, and promotes solutions.
But as a tech lead, the role shifts. They have to let others try first. Guide them, but not “grab the keyboard.” This means learning to step back and letting teammates try – even if they know a faster way. Part of a tech lead’s job is to create space for growth by offering guidance, context, and support.
This can feel difficult at first, but it is absolutely necessary.
2. Thinking about business needs
When you’re deep into engineering, shiny new technologies are hard to resist. Maybe you want to finally move everything into microservices, or use a shiny new data tool. Or maybe you just want to try the latest frontend framework, because everyone is talking about it.
As an engineer, trying out something new feels thrilling. It’s a chance to learn, to innovate, to stay ahead. But for tech leads, that same curiosity becomes a new kind of challenge. Their focus must shift from “what’s interesting” to “what’s appropriate.”
Instead of jumping at the newest trend, strong tech leads ask:
- Will this slow the team down?
- Does it introduce unnecessary risk?
- And are we solving real problems, or just chasing novelty?
This doesn’t mean innovation disappears but it must be tempered by context. The role requires constant evaluation of trade-offs between technical excitement and product impact.
Much like the gardener planning for harmony, not just beauty, tech leads aim for systems that work well together, not just isolated brilliance.
3. Communicating constantly
One of the most consistent challenges tech leads face is the sheer volume and variety of communication required.
It’s not enough to pass along information. A strong tech lead makes sure people are actually aligned. That often means spotting confusion early, repeating key messages in different ways, and creating space for others to raise concerns.
Tech leads need to:
- Talk to engineers about problems and solutions
- Align with the EMs about priorities
- Update stakeholders about progress and potential risks
- And keep everyone moving in the same direction
Because when communication fails, small things tend to become problems.
What great tech lead actually do
It isn't about technical skill alone. Think of a Venn diagram where technical leadership and people leadership intersect. It is in that intersection that the tech lead sits.
Here’s what great tech leads will do consistently:
- Create a clear technical vision: everyone knows what the team is building, and why
- Unblock others: they help teammates move past obstacles quickly
- Coach, but never command: they guide people to find answers themselves
- Balance risk and reward: they pick the right battles, knowing that sometimes they’ll need to make hard choices
- Keep growing: they constantly learn – about tech, about leadership, communication, and strategy
They're not just the best coder, or the visionary. They're the one who makes the several pieces of an artwork feel like a single, carefully thought, unified piece.
How to support tech leads
Great tech leads aren’t lone superheroes and they shouldn’t be expected to be. Their impact depends not just on what they do, but on the environment around them. If you want them to lead well, they need your support.
That means giving them:
- Space to plan and review
- Involvement early in technical conversations
- Visibility into key decisions and strategy
- And most importantly, the trust and backing to influence without burning out
Support them well, and you’ll get more than better code, you’ll get better systems, stronger teams, and fewer surprises.
The short version: tech leads are tech visionaries, but their skills don’t end there
Being a tech lead isn’t about writing the best code – it’s about making others better while keeping the whole technical vision together. It's not an easy job, and it requires both technical and people leadership.
If a project has a strong tech lead behind it, you’ll be able to tell. The work feels intentional – like the product was always meant to work that way.
Great tech leads:
- Focus on technical leadership, but not on people management
- Guide the team’s technical direction and decisions
- Help teammates grow and succeed
- Communicate constantly (across the team and organization)
- Think about the business impact, not just the technology
- Step back from coding everything themselves
- And grow their leadership skills over time
At its best, technical leadership turns a collection of efforts into a cohesive product, and a group of individuals into a team.
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Originally published on Medium.com
