How To Deal With A Terrible Tech Lead?

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I am just headed to CrossFit here. Um, we're going to go to the comments. I actually tried recording this one on Friday and my camera died like right at the end, too. I had just driven home from work. It's like a 40minute video. My camera died and uh I was like, I'm just going to try and redo it. Um, which is fine. The topic is it's a comment on one of the recent videos and the viewer was asking about how to deal with someone who like is a tech lead that gatekeeps Jira tickets. And the other part that they added in was they they often say like we when it comes to decisions that basically they just made and I when it comes to like uh you know when a whole team reaches a milestone the this tech lead just says like I was the one who did this kind of stuff.

And I mean I feel like all these things are related but I kind of want to talk about them a little bit separately. uh just because I think it helps my train of thought when I'm trying to navigate this stuff and because too like for someone who's experiencing this with a tech lead or someone else in the team um it might be the case that some of this stuff doesn't feel like it's as relevant and maybe specific parts do feel more relevant. So I wanted to start with like the the Jira ticket thing. Um to me this kind of sounds like a bit of a trust issue. I don't know enough about the person who asked the question, their experience versus the rest of the team versus the team lead or tech lead in terms of tenure and all that, but to me that kind of sounds like uh a trust kind of uh issue.

So, if it seems like someone is trying to like hoard uh the like sort of work streams, I think a couple things could be going on. And I always I know it's like hard to to keep in mind, especially when there's an observed pattern that you're like, "What the heck's going on?" But I try to remind people that like most of the time people aren't like just straight up malicious. There's usually something going on that like you might not have visibility into that is having them make decisions in a way that you're like, I don't agree with that. But it's also because like you don't really see what's going on behind the scenes. And I'm not trying to say that in a way that that justifies it, but it could help you understand why someone's making a decision because I think that that's one of the more frustrating things is you're kind of like you're left there to try and figure it out.

And it's like, dude, what the hell? Like it's not fair that this guy's being an taking all the, you know, the good Jira tickets or like the, you know, the ones that are going to have the most impact kind of thing. Um, but like if you don't understand kind of what's going on behind the scenes and it's hard to to rationalize it. Again, not not trying to defend it. I think this is really just about how do we understand it? How do we make progress on it? So, I think that when this kind of thing happens, it's either like a trust issue with the rest of the team. they don't trust that the rest of the team has the right experience to be able to carry out this kind of work or there's some type of pressure that they're under to be able to deliver

impact for promotion and to demonstrate that kind of thing and then they're uh not maybe not realizing it but like they're they end up hoarding things in a way where they're like okay like they're just hyperfocused like if I get this stuff done that's going to help for promotion. Um, this one in my opinion can tie into those two other things I mentioned in the intro which is like um you know I made this decision or like we made this decision sorry and like and then I like achieved the milestone like hey look I'm collaborative I'm working with other people and then like we reached a milestone but like look look what I did like please promotion I need attention on it. Um, again, generally I don't find that's like a malicious thing. It's just like the side effect of the pressure. Not defending it. You'll hear me keep saying that.

I'm not defending it. I just think that it's important that we try to understand where things come from. So, how do we work around this Jira ticket thing? I think a couple things come to mind. Um, one is that like I would try to, if you haven't yet, I would bring visibility to your manager on this. Uh uh the other like the underlying thing that I think people should always do but uh it's less likely is like go have a conversation with this person. If you can have difficult conversations with your colleagues, I think that you can often make a lot of progress. it's very longterm versus like sometimes I think going to your manager to have things figured out might address something in the short term which hey like that's still better than not getting addressed but um it's almost like in the long term it's kind of a it's like kind of a crutch for from two sides.

One is that it doesn't get you to focus on having difficult conversations. So the next time that something difficult comes up how do you approach it? right? Like do you go to your manager again for a solution which maybe is the right thing to do or are you able to have a conversation with this person as a first attempt. The second thing is that like often if a manager has to step in to address something it's kind of like it depends on the manager maybe they're not willing to coach this person and they're just like I need to unblock things. So they kind of step in and it's a short-term action. So then the the tech lead's like, "Sure, okay." And then like the next sprint planning or whatever, they let someone else pick up some work and then kind of uh degrades back over

time cuz they weren't actually coached around like sort of doing the right thing or you know creating a safe place for other people like more junior to perhaps take a little longer on work or to have a safe place to fail or like to be able to support them through challenging things, right? So they end up kind of falling back into their normal patterns. So I do think that yes, in this case you can and like probably should absolutely talk with your manager for some visibility on on like what's going on. But uh I think a lot of the time too if you can bring yourself to having a conversation with this person, it's probably um probably going to be helpful. It's just like it's not easy, right? If it was easy, then this person wouldn't have asked it in the comments. I just would have gone and talked to this person.

But this is a it's a common thing, right? There's always like friction that comes up in the workplace in different ways. And I often think that going to have a conversation about it's like one of the the best things you can do. Okay. Um I'm going to I have to kind of like speedrun this cuz I'm driving across it and the drive's much shorter than to and from work. the uh the next part um saying we made a decision on something and I uh you know taking the credit when team reaches a milestone on the on the Wii thing. Um I tried to sh like walk through an example the first time I recorded this which is like I think this can be the result of Uh, like again, I don't think it's necessarily malicious, which might be hard for some people to like agree with because you might say like, "How else could this possibly be?" Like, "This person's being a jackass." I get it.

Um, but I I just genuinely don't really feel that that's like a, you know, like the first type of thing that someone's focused on. It's like they're trying to sabotage or whatever. Um, I think personally because I asked this person in the comments when they asked this question, I said like, "Do you have more context around this? Like, is this a one-time thing? Is this something that just you have experience? Like, can you share a little bit more?" Um, not because I'm like doubting them, but just because I'm curious like what direction to kind of focus on for this. Got to get around this truck. One sec. Okay. Um, but yeah, I wanted a little bit more context so I could understand the scenario better and see how I might navigate it. But, um, I had said like in the last recording attempt, hey, like are other people going through this?

Is this a one-time thing? because like maybe what's happening and it's kind of like um I don't know like the opposite of bystander effect where say you're in a team setting and this person's doing this where they're like no no like we made we made this decision and like you have literal proof on like a design document that like everyone else was saying the same thing. Um, I think a couple things you can do. Uh, one is like I don't think that, and again, this is hard. I don't think trying to go into it being like, I'm gonna prove this person wrong is like the right mentality because you're you're just kind of responding based on your emotions, right?

Like obviously if this person is making you feel crappy about things like I get that you know one of the one of the natural response is like you you kind of want to you know rub it in their face back at them but that like it just doesn't help and like it doesn't really move things forward I think for the most part. But um I think something that happens is like if no one steps up to correct this person or to bring attention to it then like then no one does right like so and they'll keep kind of doing this this behavior. So, I think that if you're in a group situation and someone does this, like I would recommend kind of like standing up for yourself or for the the group and being like, "Hey, like actually, you know, there was a disagreement on this still and I don't think that it's been enclosed out." And then like if you have the evidence, it would be good to refer to it.

And again, the goal is not like this is the the subtle difference in this approach is like the goal is not to be like and therefore haha I proved you wrong. The goal is to be like we actually didn't agree on this so like we probably should talk more. And I think that sometimes when you're in a setting like this, people like if you have a handful of people that can't really find their voice to speak up, if you are the one that does it, it's I I find it's pretty rare that like the rest of the group who also is in the same situation is just going to not say anything. like you and they're going to be if they're in a a setting where they're present then like you know it would be very weird for them to say nothing maybe they are

so shy that they do that but I think that it's worth kind of like kind of stepping up for the truth and again that's not an easy thing but it's all about the approach the goal is not just to be confrontational and to be an back to the person the goal is that like there is some you know unmet resolution and it's worth discussing that to get to resolution. That's all. Now the other thing that might be the case and I've literally seen this type of thing happen before is that um maybe there was a further conversation that you weren't part of. Maybe people did get on the same page. I had a even to speak from my own experience. I had something, oh man, it's got to be within the last 6 months. I had someone that was sharing a design and uh it kind of came out of nowhere from my perspective and it was like, hey, we got to get this done.

And I'm like, I don't number one, we already have like all of our our priorities kind of set for like we had just finished planning and then this kind of thing came up and I'm like I don't I don't know like we don't have capacity for that. But the other thing is I'm like hey like I like this design's not done like no one's reviewed it. No one's signed off on it. So I was pretty confused by the whole thing. And I remember like kind of sharing this with the person and being like, "Hey, like, you know, like doing what I'm saying in this example, not to be confrontational, but to being like,"Hey, you know, our standard for designs is we have to have, you know, feedback, people signing off, trying to be transparent. I'm like, "I don't know how we're going to have capacity to fit this in." Just being open and honest, but like kind of have to have the design at least finished off like normal.

And then I ended up realizing that across two different tools, all of the comments didn't load the comments with the timestamp. So people did people did actually, you know, have conversation back and forth on this document and did agree that it was in a good spot, but I couldn't see it. But because I was trying to get to resolution, I was working with some other people to be like, "Hey, just so you know, like this is potentially coming down the pipeline." They opened up the document and they were like, "Oh, I can like, hey, like I see these comments." So I was like, "Share your screen." And anyway, so the point being that like sometimes there's just things that you're not aware of as well. So, making it a goal to go like be mean back to someone is just like not a thing I recommend, right?

Um, I would have felt so awkward and terrible if I was like just trying to be rude back to this person and be like, "Oh, you think your design's so important? Like, we're not going to go do it. Haha." And instead, I was just like, "Hey, let's move things along." And I still felt kind of embarrassed that like I didn't see the comments, but like at least I could explain, "Hey, like they didn't load." and I was trying to to move things along. So again, I think, you know, speaking up for this kind of stuff, um it's a hard thing to do, but getting in the habit of trying to do that, I think is beneficial. And if this is like something that you are trying to work with this person on in your working relationship and it's not making any progress, again, I would say go to your manager, right?

I I like recommending that people start at their level and doing like, you know, sort of a direct communication with whoever they're having some friction with and then escalating after. Okay, last part. Oh, no signal. Nice, buddy. Good job. Um is the um how do I say it? uh like taking credit basically for things. Um the I spent way too long in the last recording attempt to say like I literally have the opposite problem of this and it's like I've had feedback on this uh directly and indirectly where you know as a as a manager like I don't I really don't like taking credit for things and I want to make sure that like any team member that's involved like hey spotlight on them spotlight on them and uh to the point where like I've had people say like hey uh consider your setting and

what that means is like if I'm having communication that's like broad to an organization right um about things that my team has done then it could make sense a lot of sense to try to you know give the spotlight to people that are um you know the ones carrying out the work but uh I've also been told like hey if you consider that like is this person turning Okay, sorry. This truck was turning onto the street, but they were going like way too fast. Uh, if you consider like a conversation with your manager, right? If I uh I don't mean my manager specifically right now, but like in general, if I'm talking to my manager about things that I'm doing with the team, I don't need to preface everything with like I mean there's going to be situations where I need to let them know

like who's working on certain things, but every single step of the way like I don't need to say like you know um like if I'm writing up what we call a connect at Microsoft, I don't need to go list out every participant in the project. like these are projects I help lead. I can talk about it from the perspective that like this is something I was doing in that scenario. The audience of that my manager is going to know that like obviously I'm working with my team on these things. So I don't need to constantly say like other people did this, other people did this and in fact I need to say more of like these are my accomplishments. But uh the audience can make a big difference in terms of how you're like structuring some of that. So, that was one quick piece of feedback.

I think that sometimes people do this not realizing that um like kind of that they're taking away the spotlight from other people. Sometimes people could be doing this maliciously. I'm not saying it's impossible, but um I'll share a very quick note cuz I'm just about to pull into CrossFit that I had a person that I mentor and uh they had this experience where they had worked on something and they weren't there for the final deliverable and someone who was there for the final deliverable basically um they shared like the final deliverable and then they didn't give this person any credit. And when I was talking to this person that I mentor, um, because they were very bothered by it, like I feel like rightfully so. This camera got all messed up. Um, I said like I think that you should talk to this person, right? And again, I said how you approach this makes a difference.

It's not a matter to go make them feel bad about it. Like they made you feel bad. I don't think that was the intention, but if you go back and just try to like be mean to them or like make them feel bad for it, like I I don't really think that's going to help. So, I said, I think it's good to let them know that like, you know, you you felt a certain way that like you you know, it's it's kind of done. You're not like trying to seek revenge on them or something. And because they were even telling me like, hey, it's done. Like, it's fine, but like I am bothered by it. So I said, "You can structure this as like feedback for them for next time." And so they did.

They said, "Hey, this is how it made me feel and like I just wanted to let you know because in in the future if you keep this in mind, like you know, it can kind of save someone else from feeling this way." And the person took the feedback very well. They were like, "I can't believe, you know, total um, you know, misstep, like absolutely should have included you. Didn't mean for it to come across a certain way. Really sorry." um like they I wasn't in the conversation, but hearing sort of the the outcome of that, this person felt very bad and they were like, I can't believe that that happened. So, sometimes this can be a thing of like someone doesn't realize they're doing it. And I think that's important. Again, try to have a conversation with them.

But uh I think that sometimes this happens because people are um maybe they have the the wrong incentives and like there's a hyperfocus for promotion and like hey look I'm doing I'm doing the thing like here like attention please like I've done the thing right and that can be one of the reasons it happens again if you're trying to have a conversation with this person to like to bring attention to it you don't have to be their manager I understand that um if that's not making any progress ress or they're not acknowledging it or anything, then like I would go have a conversation with your manager about it and say like, hey, this is this is making me or the people on the team feel like, you know, our accomplishments aren't being acknowledged.

But you can probably see the pattern across all three of these, which is like I recommend that you go have a conversation with the person and then from there um you know, escalate is necessary, but I don't believe a lot of this stuff comes from a malicious place. It's just kind of like crappy habits that people pick up. So, um, hope that helps. Uh, I think if I had a little bit more context, then it would be a little bit less generic, but starting point. So, thanks so much for watching. If you have questions, leave them below in the comments. Otherwise, go to codeccommute.com and you can submit your questions anonymously. Thanks. Take care.