How to lead
A Dev Team
Things I Was Unprepared For As A Lead Developer
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fair warning this is gonna be a little
bit interactive so please try to go
ahead and raise your hand if I asked you
to would be nice first question who here
is a developer and/or designer and
please keep your hand raised if the
answer is yes who does not to be intent
to be a developer for ever
okay okay quite a lot of people good
good good
then who here thinks he or she is ready
to lead a team lice lice who just likes
raising their hand
cool thank you all so my name is Chris
Kyle the Fink I do stuff at AB stamp HP
I was a coach at we camp which is an
awesome adventure of full of coding on
an island in the Netherlands if you want
more information for next year I can
recommend it please ask me later
I also currently work at ticket swap but
this story is not about ticket swap
before I go ahead and tell my story can
anybody tell me who this is
it is Alex and that is great indeed very
good this guy was 33 years old when he
already was the greatest emperor in
general that the ancient age knew
he conquered dozens of countries he led
great armies and he was raised from a
little boy up to the man that he became
through military school and army school
to to become that that great emperor
that leader of men now of course he had
all that privilege remember privilege he
had it I didn't you probably don't have
access to military school from birth
either so the question then becomes how
do you get to be that that grade leader
that some of you think you are we are
which is which is great I learned it on
the job I didn't went to school for it I
learned on a job
and this was basically my past this is
an oversimplification of a couple of
career options that most developers know
this light was not made by me was made
by Brendan Hayes he did an excellent
talk at Rubicon a couple of years ago
about hacking your career it's on
YouTube and I can really recommend it
but what it shows is that you have
junior development where most people
start when they leave the university and
then you have a myriad of options
development offend you Liz become a more
senior developer you can start your own
company you become a project leader all
these things that you can do what a lot
of people I know do is they start junior
developer they've come a MIT developer
senior developer and then they take a
turn to the left that's what I did and I
became an engineering Lee team lead lead
developer as it was called in my company
back then now what you can see here is
that it's not a developer role anymore
right this is in the management track
and this is interesting because the role
was still called lead developer but it's
in the management track now this can
differ for copper company some
definitely developers I know do only
that they lead the development team they
don't do vacation days they don't do any
of the personal things just development
that's cool but just to realize that for
companies it can be in that track ok so
my story at the time I was working for a
small company within a very large
company it was one of the biggest media
companies in the Netherlands which to be
fair to analysis very small but still we
were in a very new development
team this company although being in
existence for 15 years didn't have a
development team of their own so the
form of a development team I was part of
it but the manager there left okay that
happens right so right before Christmas
my boss she comes up to me and she says
you know we think that you would be the
ideal person to be the leader of this
team what we call lead developer oh
that's nice came with a good pay raise
of course sure yeah yeah I'm up for the
task I'll do that this was a team of
four out of developers next to me there
was a second fly more technical support
team which was supposed to be merged in
to that development team and there was
more to external teams that worked on a
remote location so all in all this was
twelve thirteen people I would start 2nd
of January first was on a Sunday 2nd of
January and I had for a week long like
from Christmas to New Year's Eve New
Year's New Year's sorry I had all these
dreams these hopes these things that I I
knew I could do they had a huge amount
of legacy I hate that outward but the
Hat a huge amount of unmaintained comme
des we're still running on a older PHP
version they were still using a database
out of the stone Age's which requires
two people to administer insane I had
all these things that I saw it by myself
like oh yeah now is my time right my
opportunity to change things in here I'm
ready to lead this team
to victory did it go so well at all I
had at least these hopes and all these
things that I want it but I could so
distract it I could distract it by a lot
of fire things things have nothing to do
with upgrading PHP or databases or
migrating or legacy nothing whatsoever I
did other stuff and so a couple of
months and I started to ask myself the
question why were these tasks so
distracting for me what were these
things that took up all of my week and I
couldn't do anything done why I just
wasn't prepared I was not prepared for
this job at all it turned out that the
company and I had a very different
meaning to what it meant to be a lead
developer they thought this is just
gonna be a manager type of person a
manager type of person that has intimate
knowledge into the code in our code base
so that has all kinds of benefits whilst
I thought I'm just gonna be the one
responsible I'm gonna spear had new
ideas they didn't wanted to wanted me to
spearhead new ideas at all at all so my
first lesson the thing that I learned
and thing that I want to give you today
is expectation management it is perhaps
the most important thing in your career
but especially to me when I transition
to to being a leader Phillip ER in fact
I'd say that you should learn what is
expected from you
and be honest about would you expect
from others when discussing the
possibility even of becoming a leader
you can you can stand up right now you
can leave if you think I'm boring you
can fall asleep you can open Twitter and
just sink into your timeline if you want
but please go home with this there's one
lesson everybody got it
expectation management very important
cuz I didn't do this I didn't do this at
all and it left me to not even see the
code at all anymore
none of it oh that's not true the only
time I did saw code was during a coat
review which I did a lot of now spending
less time on your coat is of course
logical you're in any role it is a
leadership role and there is different
other stuff that you have to do to come
to it but nothing at all that's that's
too little I'd say so if you're ever in
this kind of position if you're in that
kind of position right now try to find
ways to get more Co time again people
ask me okay so what is a good sort of
trait that trade / / time what what how
much percent of time should I dedicate
to the coat and I can't answer that I
don't know it depends on the context it
depends on you as a as a leader depends
on your company it depends on your team
heavily but I'd say personally my god
feeling would say at least 40% of your
time should go to the code because it is
the output of your team and being our
coding doesn't mean just being behind a
computer on your own programming it can
be a myriad of things like pair
programming and stuff like that which
all help so make sure you still got
enough code times basically what it
rhymes
I figured out three things to cope with
this the fact that I didn't see to go
anymore three little things that if you
hear them you're probably thinking what
the hell is this guy thinking about I
mean couldn't you figure it out in the
first day seriously but no I could and I
hope you all could but if not take this
home so the first thing was agenda
management who here uses an agenda
nobody a couple of people then who uses
it every day a lot of people okay that's
cool cuz I didn't do that either
when I was a developer we had the Sprint
planning retrospectives and the daily
standup that was it
no more meetings other than that plus my
entire team had to go to that meeting
room so I just followed along with them
was easy I didn't need an agenda of
course I had one for personal stuff and
it wasn't my phone but yeah how many
appointments do you have I didn't need
it so it wasn't very good at managing my
agenda either then the week the same
week as I became a lately developer so
from 2 to 6 of January my entire agenda
was filled for the rest of the year all
these meetings about new projects
products board meetings keeping the
board in loop system administrators that
wanted to talk to me perfectly support
people that wanted something of me and
they all needed my time multiple times a
week hours on end with no agenda for
those meetings so agenda management
is something I had to employ I had to be
able to block hours in my agenda to keep
him free no meetings my entire morning
no meeting if you're somebody that it's
more productive in the afternoon block
your afternoon do the meetings in the
morning this really helps you to keep
that focus keep that code time as well
because otherwise it's so hard other
people will just walls over your agenda
and it's gonna be filled up now this
first thing required a second thing of
me to say no more often I don't know
about you but for me that's hard it's
hard to do I don't often say no I like
to say yes I like to help people if they
come up with a problem I like to say yes
I like to get them moving and solve
their problems it's what I do I'm a
problem solver right so saying no that
was super hard saying no to a project
request sorry I can't do it right now it
was super hard but I have to learning
now I'm not saying that you should be
impolite to people though I'm not saying
that you should shut him down off and
shum down and not interface with him at
all what you can do though is give them
alternatives sorry I won't be able to
make that meeting on Tuesday but what
about next week I have a slot open there
sorry I'm probably not the one that can
produce that sequel report that you're
asking but there's a database
administrator right there try him he may
have time you know help people on their
way they'll remember you as a polite
person and hopefully they won't ask so
much of you anymore but at least you say
no so you said a boundary for yourself
it's very important cool
agenda management saying no more often
okay
this school I got this there was a third
thing though something so easy that I
totally forgot about it
delegating I'm not alone I am NOT the
team there is no I in team I found out
that every little thing that people
asked of me I took it as a very personal
question I thought I had to do it I
thought I had to fix that bug I thought
I had to implement that feature I was
personally responsible of it which of
course makes no sense there's an whole
team there was 12 people for crying out
loud
I could do this I could go up to his
team and say hey this new feature came
in what do you think how should we build
it hey people support reported a bug
who's free who can do something from
here delegating and I'm not saying that
you should tell people what to do
that's very bossy style now it's not my
style but discussing things and
delegating them asking people to help
you people want to help like I did for
me the best time was when something came
in and I was able to pair up with for
example a more junior developer because
then I could have the more delegating
exercise and I was able to do code time
so it was like a double high-five
seriously people love to help especially
in a team otherwise they wouldn't be
working in a team makes sense right
I've got three things agenda management
saying no more often delegating cool dit
dos that was still not able to do all
the other things that I wanted my god
what was it doing where was my time
going I looked at my agenda and over
time I saw a pattern of things that I
was doing other than all those things
that I set out to you for the most part
I was doing a lot of cultural things and
culture building things now like I said
this it was a very new development team
and it's very hard for new people to
come together and form a culture now I
had to form an idea in my hat what I
wanted that culture to be this is before
I even took this to the team this was
like okay what what as a leader what do
I want this culture to be in this in
this group of individuals that have come
together and be paid to do this job so I
thought of you know what are things that
I like behavioral thinks that I like in
people
I like promoting good ideas for example
taking responsibility for your work and
your IDs those things that I value
highly but there's also a saying that
the culture of any organization is
shaped by the worst behavior a leader is
reeling to tolerate it's like okay worst
behavior what's that got me thinking
what is the behavior I'm not willing to
tolerate people coming in late I come in
late people have good reasons to come in
late
I don't know people didn't transfer
knowledge when it happens hate it when
it happens
and of course one day on a Friday five
o'clock in the afternoon
something broke down on the website most
people went home already
and it was in a new feature that's
somebody that went home built and all
signs pointed towards the knowledge not
being transferred you know all this
stuff that I was thinking about that I
wasn't willing to tolerate so next week
we fixed it barely we fixed it and next
week when I was calmer I organized the
retrospective an extra retrospect if I
should say to you know discuss why did
this happen what was the root cause of
it and I of course stupidly saw I
already know what I'm gonna hear I
already know the answer I'm just gonna
ask it to be polite I knew that they
didn't transfer their knowledge but they
did of course they did they were not
stupid they're professionals they're
paid for it their team I just had to
learn another big lesson which is Trust
trust in the professionals that you work
with I had to let it go literally I had
to stop micromanaging I had to trust
these people to do their job they were
paid for
and Trust is something I also fell you
highly I like to be trusted and I
learned dust ly to place more trust into
people so I think that a culture is also
shaped by the best behavior
a leader is willing to promote works
both ways but there was more things to
this culture thing things that I that
took a lot of time for me especially
because we had quite a number of junior
the ratio between junior people and more
senior people was like 50% which is a
lot especially for a new development
team so it was hard so one of the things
that I took extra amount of time for was
motive mentoring sorry mentoring people
to reach their goals the things in their
careers and life's that they want to
achieve through work as one of their
means you know figuring out what you
want to your career when you want to do
what are your not so good in yeah and
how can I help you with that trying to
unlock people themselves trying to
unlock their process of thought it takes
a lot of time but it's so important to
do especially as a leader because if
ready we wondered or not but a lot of
young people still look up to older
people and leaders so if you as a leader
open up and start mentoring and in
return be are willing and prepared to be
mentored a little bit that opens up a
world of possibilities
giving and receiving feedback it's also
something that I took a lot of time for
I personally think it is very important
for my personal growth to constantly ask
for feedback of people I do that I did
that back then I still do it in my
current job even if there is not an
official feedback program or anything
where I 360 degrees feedback program and
I believe what they call it even if we
don't have that officially I still
created it and I want feedback give me
feedback in turn I would also like to
give you feedback in order for you to
grow and again having a very union team
that was very important to me it shapes
your culture whoo what happened there
there we go
motivating is another thing I I had a
lot of issues with like I said we had a
lot of legacy we were working with a
database technology from a company I
will not mention you probably guessed it
already and it's not very up-to-date
anymore especially the version that we
were using so motivation was hard to
find it was hard to find motivation for
people to get up in the morning go to
work work on a feature in that database
and then have join their work because
joy and your work is really important so
we found out that by by trying to
motivate each other more you can really
find that fun spot again and motivation
can be can be very interesting thing to
see it can be like I don't know if
there's anyone here that does boxing but
if you do there's a punching bag and
somebody holds it for you you start
punching it and then this other person
it's like yeah come on you can do it one
more punch Artur up up down up this is
very motivating if you've ever
experienced that you know that is it can
be a very motivational thing to to have
experienced and it is roughly the same I
found in in a work situation if there's
someone who says yeah we can do this and
it's gonna be fun because we're gonna do
this and this and this and there's a
challenge over here clone let's do it
together
that is extremely motivating to people
but it takes a long time it's a huge
impact on your culture
I know companies that don't do it and
the people just leave after a certain
amount of time and it's just sad to see
talking about leaving I know it came
back down your culture is hiring and
firing people sadly I had to fire
someone once in my life and it was one
of the worst experience that I ever had
because it's really sad but equally
interesting is hiring people that's
that's incredibly hard as gram told us
this morning it's not just a pipeline
thing it's a culture thing as well and
having it all correct and in order that
is that is hard especially as a white
male but the impact on your team is also
very interesting because teams are
immutable
that means the teams don't change if you
take team a at two people it doesn't
become team a plus team plus two people
it becomes team B which is an entire
different team with different cultural
values different insides different roles
even though they're not explicit so this
is very important to know and as a
thought experience if you are currently
in the process of hiring someone or you
just got a new teammate watch this
process happen in your own team it's
very interesting your team becomes new
team
sickness and other personal problems of
people are some things that I wanted to
handle with grace so I invested a lot of
time in it I had a co-worker that had a
baby on the way which is great it's
great but as soon as he got the call
come to the hospital you know he would
drop everything out of his hands which
is fine of course go here take my card
go but we as a team had to talk about
okay how are we going to resolve it that
moment in time when he leaves how are we
gonna handle the work that he'd leave
that he left us people getting sick has
an equally dentin on your or not a dent
but an impact on our culture especially
if the sickness is prolonged for a
period of weeks or months if somebody's
missing you can see that the team droves
back to another team again because teams
are immutable take somebody out it goes
good goes okay for a couple of days but
after a couple of weeks this team starts
to rearrange their roles you know if
this this person was a more natural
leader and this person is now gone and I
don't want to will stand up like yeah
but I have a more natural leader now you
know there's processes in teams that
happen so y'all influences your culture
and the last thing I thought really
important was leading by example all
these things up here that were important
to me all these cultural things that I
wanted to have without my team having
wanting to have them or you know just
they were just my values I find I found
back then and I still think so that I
had to lead by example if I wanted to be
mentored I had to start mentoring if I
wanted feedback I had to give feedback
first and ask it
so what I'm trying to say here is I'm
more of a leader kind of person and
that's not a boss up there not caring
about the people he has to work with
like my mom that's not me
but then I also mean that you're much
slower to reach the top sorry I'll get
out of the way okay go with sculture now
something different something entirely
different
that might or might not be recognizable
for you
financial injuries is there anybody here
that it owns a company quite a couple of
people yeah you probably know what I'm
talking about here so when I wanted to
new IDE before a new license for we use
Jetson jetbrains life ideas at work I
used to go up to my manager or we had an
assistant of the director that handled
all kind of transactional things with
money but when I became elite developer
my team start to go to me you know how
do we get money I don't know let me
check because even in personal life I'm
not I'm not very good with money so let
me tell you how how I handle my money
money comes in
some of it goes through a separate
account for you know all the standard
things like Rend and insurances don't
like that
and the rest is basically for me to
spend and then there's a little piece at
the end of the month that's left but so
I'm not very good with money but
businesses don't like it when your
miniature their money like that they
don't like that for you well so that day
the boss comes up to me and says hey you
know that database company that we've
hired for six months now how much did it
cost us up to now and how much more do
you want to spend on them
interesting question let me get back to
you on that now back then I didn't have
to beard but if I had I would be
stroking it all day I cleared out my
schedule this was out right after lunch
s I cleared up my schedule for the
entire day I thought you know I'm not
the best in Excel and in accounting but
I can do this I can do this I'm a fairly
decent programmer I should be able to do
this right so I downloaded all the
invoices that I had for my mail and and
other places I did an ephah system and
started typing away in Excel and making
formulas and you know like you do when
you don't know Excel at all I I didn't
know what the hell I was doing and I I
fail miserably so it was six o'clock I
thought you know I'm just gonna go home
take all these with me have a nice
dinner first and then re-energized and
in the evening and if need be the entire
night I can just do this so I got home
and luckily my wife already prepared
dinner but I wasn't I wasn't paying
attention you probably know what that's
like right coming home and not paying
attention to your wife or spouse so she
says you know what's wrong you're
distracted with something what's wrong
so what tell are the entire story she
tells me you know what
go sit on the couch is the remote the TV
go what chump thing give me 30 minutes
and I'll be back with the solution okay
nice nice cool yeah sure why not
finally half an hour not having to think
about it that's good and she comes up
like literally 30 minutes later with
this and she says yeah you know all
those invoices just fill them out there
and then over there you can see how much
you spend and over there you can
estimate how much you can still oh my
god your life saver Wow
now if you're questioning this story
she's right here so you can ask this was
one of the hardest thing I had one of
the hardest thing I had to do at that
moment but it taught me it occurred to
me back then I know that I had managers
before leaders financial people that you
know I'd seen these things before
couldn't I have asked them to take a
better look at it could could I could I
have done that and I guess I could have
I could have learned more from the
leaders that I already had I could have
asked them hey what's their budget as a
deaf team where are we spending our
money on how do you do that what's your
system I don't need to the exact numbers
I don't care about those just teach me
here it more than just developer stuff
because I know code already and you
probably don't teach me what you do now
learn from our previous current and
future leaders is something that I
learned by now another thing that I used
and their skill that I had to use quite
often there was public speaking so tada
Here I am
is extremely useful to be able to tell a
story about a problem in laymen terms
because the board of directors data no
code your clients probably don't know it
support people don't probably don't know
it and marketing probably don't know
that know it sales does sure doesn't
know it so being able to explain things
in a simpler way it can really make your
job easier for example I once use this
picture to explain the state of our code
base true story and after me telling
stories about you know why is it so hard
to migrate our code base from one
hosting provider to the other hosting
provider using this as a metaphor it it
clicked better with the board that yes
we needed more money we needed people
and we needed more time to do this so
being able to explain that safe to our
team a lot of trouble talking to others
and with others I do not mean other
developers or designers or product
managers because I I knew how to talk to
those people now they're my kind of
peeps marketing sales communication
people accountings controllers people
like that
those were the hardest ones to talk to
because what do I have in common with
them but it turned out it was very
important to be able to talk to them
because marketing was about to launch a
marketing campaign at primetime that I
didn't know about oh so it was very
important to me to do to be able to do
that to be able to talk to other people
outside of my comfort zone I had to
learn that I had to find out how to do
that and it turns out
finding common ground with these people
is the key to success so I for example
the luck that I had to do a management
training and so did all the other new
managers in the company
I wondered then was the marketing
director so next Monday I could ask him
you know how was your weekend how did
you do that exercise as well and we had
we found common ground to talk to each
other we connected a little bit more and
it was easier to talk about work after
that
these are all the things that I've
learned that I struggle with that I've
probably done wrong things that I've
probably doing wrong right now just the
fact that I know what I'm doing wrong
doesn't mean I'm not doing it wrong
anymore but if there's one final thing
that I've learned is that it's not about
the title yes my title was lead
developer no my title isn't lead
developer anymore and just a software
engineer but that doesn't mean that I
cannot do things that I can't take
leadership of my own life my own career
my own work my own team the culture in
it so there's a lot of things that you
if you want to of course can do right
now like Monday when you're back for
example start mentoring if there's no
formal program within your company start
one you don't need permission to do that
just take somebody else that feels the
same way and go to a meeting room and
and start flushing out how you want to
do this more people will tag along if
nobody's into it you can always ask
others friends former colleagues people
in the community for example are very
good ways of mentoring as well there is
this website called PHP mentoring now it
has been mentioned to me that there
should be a - between PHP and mentoring
this is a website started by a couple of
PHP people but is not exclusively for
PHP they do mentoring all sorts of
different topics mostly non-technical
leader and you can assign yourself
either as a sign up as a mentor or a
mentee looking for a mentor and this is
a great way to meet new people meet new
people that have all these other skills
that you want to learn or if you think
you know I have a good skill that I can
give to other people's
up there and and become a mentor it's
something you can do Monday ask for help
more from your peers from your current
leaders whoever that may be like I said
learn from them ask them for the stuff
that you don't know already that you
might be able to use later on I found it
very hard like I said and this book was
gifted to me it's called the art of
asking by Amanda Palmer and I can really
recommend it it is a great book there's
also an audio book which she has done
her self and it is excellent feedback
you can do this some Monday just ask
somebody give me feedback create a
Google forum or talk to each other
whatever you want you can do this public
speaking again you can do this
right here at a conference for example
but if this audience might be too large
for you you can also do lunch sessions
which your own team go to your own
community I know there's a quite a
couple of communities around here you
know go there speak
they're probably always looking for new
speakers I know in Amsterdam and I'm
Steph HP we are and it is a great stage
to try out new things even when you're
anxious to speak and generally take an
interest in other people again something
you can do today talk to some money
today that you haven't met before take
an interest and maybe you'll learn
something thank you
