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In my experience you choose how to deal with individuals, not the team as a whole.
I worked with some excellent devs that I discussed things with as equals, if I disagreed we would keep discussing until either we changed tact or we agreed to do something I could live with. Most of the time I got put of their way and let them work after a brief chat about system design decisions.
Then there is the other side. People that don't want to learn or have passion for the job. They got the job because it was relatively safe guaranteed income. They want to shove some shit out of the door and move on because the boring bits like tests are too much for their lack of passion to overcome. These people are hopeless. I have had 1000s of line functions where you scroll off the screen to the right every other line, no tests or willingness to learn how to write tests, dirty code, slow and shit code, horrible system design, and no appreciation for why these things get brought up to begin with. -
@craig939393 dealing with the second group is very different from the first.
You tell them what to do or they will just write some shit and ship it, then you have to explain to your boss why you as the lead allowed shit out the door and why you are trying to justify looking at something that already works today (because it might not work tomorrow).
These people I tell them what to do and if they don't do it I go to management to tell them these people aren't team players. I have no time now for people that just want to shovel shit and look good rather than craft. -
Hire good people and let them work. As a lead or manager, you're responsible to tell them what to do, not how to do it - and then you resource them as effectively as you can to do that work.
Now if team members come to you and go "hey, we've got an issue, help!" - then of course you help. Likewise if they aren't pulling their weight, you intervene. But if you hire good enough people, then that shouldn't be too much of an issue. -
@AlmondSauce thanks!
The previous lead left and left me in charge so I'm kind of stuck with the team I have right now 😅
But that's valuable insight, thank you! -
@Bikonja I just want to add one thing my lead does right at times:
Don't be afraid to inspire them. Sometimes a small hint can go a great way 😉 of course this only works for the motivated kind.
Question for leads...
Have you found that it's possible to have a balanced leadership style instead of ruling with an iron fist?
Let me explain what I mean.
There's always going to be room for improvement, there's going to be at least the occasional issue that happens, etc.
As a lead, your job is to not have issues happen and to have the team work effectively.
Now, for me, my goal was to have a balanced style in the sense that if there's a small issue or small room for improvement, but the team is already stressed, I take the heat for it if necessary and let them relax so they're not stressed and they can focus on the bigger things.
For medium improvements, I essentially put it to the vote so the team can have their say in whether they agree with the proposal on improvement.
And so on, idea being to have a balance between "Do what I tell you" and "do whatever you want".
However, I have found that doing so does essentially nothing to improve team morale and team cohesion. Any thing that needs doing and I force them into it, any thing I don't protect them from, any thing they don't agree with will still manifest as problems in the team, a single "you have to do this" will make them complain about the leadership style being "force to implement".
Being completely hands off and essentially not a lead, just basically a support dev more or less, is not what I'm really looking for, but also isn't good for a team that does genuinely have things that need to improve (stupid errors not being caught in dev OR review, system not being fully testable because of external dependencies that are not really necessary for tests, etc).
So the only option I see there is simply ruling with an iron fist and leaning into being that hated lead that just forcea you to do things and "doesn't care about you".
I've already stepped down from this lead position because I don't want to be that guy, but if I'm looking for another position I'm curious if this is just universal or hae you guys found that it IS possible to have a "good team" where you can be adults and discuss things as a team and improve as a team?
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