I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?
4 days ago
- #Trust Building
- #Incident Management
- #Tech Leadership
- João joined mytaxi (FREE NOW) as Backend Chapter Lead in June 2018, seeking growth in technical leadership.
- The role involved backend technical leadership and people management in a horizontal setup with over 200 services to manage.
- João faced challenges early on, including an incident on his first day, revealing gaps in incident management and debugging culture.
- He realized titles don't grant influence; trust must be built through credibility, reliability, intimacy, and low self-orientation.
- Key moments in building trust included creating a portal to manage regulatory complexity and helping colleagues debug issues systematically.
- João learned that solving real problems and being present during crises builds more trust than presentations or strategies.
- Advice for new Tech Leads: understand team pains first, deliver immediate value, focus on reducing toil, and be patient with feedback cycles.
- Trust is cumulative and earned through daily interactions, not titles or speeches.
- João is writing 'The Tech Lead Handbook' and offers a free alignment toolkit for Tech Leads and Engineering Managers.