Technical leaders care about building amazing products and the best engineering teams. Everything they do is about the end user and their teams. These leaders are motivated and highly interested in the details, both big-picture and laser-focused. They prioritize their team’s happiness and productivity by filtering out noise and impeccable delegation.
Starting as one of a handful of female engineers before rising to be the CTO of Redfin, Frey leads a software engineering team of more than 150 engineers with the goal of building technologies that make buying and selling a home less complicated. But, before she settled in to make that her goal, she first wanted to crack the nut of diversity in her field. Now nearly 32% of her team are women. Focusing on big data, analytic engineering, and system architecture, Frey makes sure that the right information flows in the right directions.
Having worked at companies for powerhouse tech companies like Amazon and Salesforce, Polinsky became CTO of Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service. Referring to the difference between being a developer and being a technical leader, she detailed that “When you’re a manager, and you’re not actually writing the hands-on code and influencing through people, things take longer… but your impact is much broader, and if you can stick through it you find other ways to see your impact, and that you can be really proud of the people and lives that you can influence.”
As the CTO of Starbucks, Martin-Flickinger has made it her personal mission to make the coffee giant’s technology as easy to use as it is to access one of the chain’s more than 28,000 store locations. Customer satisfaction is her number one concern. In an interview, Martin-Flickinger explained that “tech has to amplify that human connection, not get in the way of it. It is not about building cool, shiny tech. It’s about building tech that appeals to that connection and craft that is uniquely Starbucks.”
Getting the best and brightest engineering talent is vital to a good technical leader, but so is diversity and inclusion. A functional team is a team that encompasses all points of view and voices.
As the leader of the team, you teach through example. In technical leadership, perhaps more so than other leadership fields, it boils down to a bottom-up approach: being a servant to the team, working side-by-side with them to help them solve problems and achieve their goals.
Engineering leaders delegate and ensure their team is efficient and productive. They protect their team from distractions and interruptions by juggling all the many stakeholders’ needs and wishes while making stable, clear decisions. This empowers the group to work efficiently and productively, allowing business to scale.
You don’t want to hire someone who might be a brilliant coder, but who is toxic or bad for the team. As Apple’s Steve Wozniak said “It’s not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.”
Engineering leaders don’t lead through mandate or authoritarianism. Instead, they focus on hiring and leading productive, motivated teams.
Technical leaders need to be flexible to handle the many stakeholders that are involved in engineering projects. While it is important to maintain a consistent vision for your team, you should be willing to bend without breaking.
Attracting talent means actively participating in finding new team members rather than passively awaiting relying on a recruiter. A manager must continuously spend time on attracting the best possible talent.
The best engineering leaders are able to not only provide vision and direction to the team but are also able to focus their energy and effort on helping the team. A great engineering leader works to identify and eliminate roadblocks that are keeping their team from performing at their very best. This is the essence of servant leadership.
Great technical leaders don’t assume they have all the answers. If they don’t know the answer to a question, they are happy to defer to another team member or to find the answer and get back to you. To them, giving a helpful answer is more important than looking smart.
Managers need to trust their team and give them space. Micromanaging means undermining the team’s skills and ability to get things done, and therefore their motivation and self-confidence. Trust between the managers and their teams should be the foundation of their relationship. And it’s the manager’s role and job to create it.
The very best engineering leaders know how you take your coffee, your partner’s name, and your favorite music. They care deeply about the people on their team. These are the types of engineering leaders who get the very best work out of their team.
The best engineering leaders need to be able to communicate the mission and vision for their teams. This is as important for managers as it is for executives. A team’s mission is why the team exists. A vision is how the world will look in the future if the team accomplishes its mission.
