Leveling Up As a Tech Lead Growing As a Technical, Project, and People Leader (Anemari Fiser)（Z-Library）

Leveling Up as a Tech Lead GROWING AS A TECHNICAL, PROJECT, AND PEOPLE LEADER ANEMARI FISER foreword by PATRICK KUA

Becoming a tech lead is one of the most challenging transitions in a technical career. You’re no longer just writing code; now you’re guiding people, aligning teams, and translating strategy into execution. Suddenly, your calendar’s packed, Slack is blowing up, and you’re still somehow expected to ship code. You’re not building systems anymore, you’re building people. And no one gave you the manual—until now. Leveling Up as a Tech Lead gives you the clarity and tools to lead with confidence while maintaining your technical edge. Drawing on her years as a Thoughtworks tech lead and a trainer to hundreds of other technical leaders, Anemari Fiser shares practical frameworks, real-world examples, and plug-and-play scripts you can use right away. Whether you’re just stepping into the role or looking to sharpen your skills, this book helps you lead with clarity, empathy, and real impact. • Understand the true expectations of the tech lead role in your context • Communicate effectively and manage stakeholders with confidence • Build trust and collaboration across your team • Delegate, mentor, and coach to grow others and yourself • Balance hands-on technical work with people leadership • Lead through uncertainty, conflict, and change Anemari Fiser is a tech leadership coach and trainer who helps engineers grow into confident, people-centered tech leads. A former software engineer and tech lead herself, she’s coached 500+ engineers and trained hundreds of tech leads around the world. She’s the creator of O’Reilly’s Soft Skills for Tech Leads course and the Level Up as a Tech Lead newsletter. She also shares regular leadership advice with a 30,000+ tech audience on LinkedIn. TECH LE ADER SHIP “Anemari presents a comprehensive look at modern-day tech leadership (including GenAI use), grounded in actionable examples from her career, and provides sound advice on how to navigate trade-offs. New tech leads can learn a lot, but experienced tech leads can get some pointers too.” — Rebecca Parsons, coauthor of Building Evolutionary Architectures and former CTO/CTO Emerita of Thoughtworks Leveling Up as a Tech Lead GROWING AS A TECHNICAL, PROJECT, AND PEOPLE LEADER ISBN: 978-1-098-17751-5 US $45.99 CAN $57.99

Leveling Up as a Tech Lead Growing as a Technical, Project, and People Leader Anemari Fiser Foreword by Patrick Kua

978-1-098-17751-5 [LSI] Leveling Up as a Tech Lead by Anemari Fiser Copyright © 2026 Anemari Fiser. All rights reserved. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 141 Stony Circle, Suite 195, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Acquisitions Editor: David Michelson Development Editor: Shira Evans Production Editor: Gregory Hyman Copyeditor: Liz Wheeler Proofreader: Piper Content Partners Indexer: Sue Klefstad Cover Designer: Susan Thompson Cover Illustrator: Susan Thompson Interior Designer: Monica Kamsvaag Interior Illustrator: Kate Dullea December 2025: First Edition Revision History for the First Edition 2025-11-19: First Release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781098177515 for release details. The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Leveling Up as a Tech Lead, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The views expressed in this work are those of the author and do not represent the publisher’s views. While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.

Contents | Foreword v | Preface ix 1 | The Role of a Tech Lead 1 2 | How to Become a Tech Lead 33 3 | Building Relationships 59 4 | Running One-on-Ones with Your Team 85 5 | Unlocking the Power of Feedback 107 6 | Delegating 137 7 | Building and Scaling Tech Teams 167 8 | Addressing Technical Challenges 221 9 | Managing Technical Projects 267 10 | Bringing It All Together: Navigating Technical Leadership 305 11 | Beyond Tech Lead: Charting Your Career Path 339 | Index 357 iii

Foreword In my first role as a tech lead, a long time ago now, it felt like I was given a blank map and told to chart a course through unknown lands. I had no guide, no proven path, and no certainty that I was heading in the right direction. I had no idea what “good” looked like in this role. Somehow, I must have done something right, because a few years later, I was asked to run tech lead training for my colleagues at Thoughtworks, which eventually grew into a global program. During that time, I realized my struggles were not unique. Many others faced the same uncertainty with very few resources to support them. When I searched for books to recommend, I found only three. Two were management-focused books, and only one of those, Becoming a Technical Leader by the late Gerald Weinberg (Dorset House), truly addressed technical leadership. More than a decade ago, I wrote Talking with Tech Leads (CreateSpace) to help fill that gap. Since publishing that book, I have trained thousands of tech leads, engi- neering managers, and staff engineers and coached dozens of CTOs. Over that time, our industry has shifted dramatically. We moved from on-premises to cloud-based software, from desktop to web to mobile, and from big-bang releases to continuous delivery. Yet, despite these changes, newly appointed tech leads keep asking the same questions, such as What is expected of me? Where should I be spending my time? How much hands-on coding should I be doing? While these fundamental questions remain constant, the role itself has also become far more demanding. Some tech leads guide teams with a shared techni- cal background, such as a team of Java developers. Others lead cross-functional teams that demand knowledge across fields like web, mobile, backend, data sci- ence, and more. Even a so-called “full-stack developer” cannot be an expert across such a broad range, and the rapid adoption of AI-driven tools has only increased the complexity. The confusion surrounding the tech lead role has deepened with the emergence of newer roles such as engineering manager and staff engineer, v

where responsibilities often overlap. On top of all this, many teams now follow a “You build it, you run it” model, adding operational and support work to the tech lead’s responsibilities. The modern tech lead role is more multifaceted than ever before. Despite the increased complexity, dedicated resources for tech leads remain rare. Our industry has produced excellent books like The Manager’s Path (Camille Fournier), The Staff Engineer’s Path (Tanya Reilly), and The Engineering Executive’s Primer (Will Larson) (all O’Reilly). But tech leads still lack the same breadth of practical guidance, which is why I am excited about this book. When Anemari asked me to write this foreword, she reminded me that she took part in one of my tech lead courses in Barcelona, which helped her grow into the role. This book is a testament to her continued growth, and in its pages, she shares the lessons, experiences, and tools that helped her succeed. She begins with the most pressing and complicated question: What is the scope of the tech lead role? It is a difficult question because every organization sets different expectations. Even when role descriptions exist, each team and situation demands a different approach, something described as situational leadership. Anemari provides a starting point to help you define what matters most in your current situation. From there, the book lays out a map of common responsibilities across both people and technical domains. On the people side, you will learn how to build relationships, foster a strong feedback culture, and guide your team toward high performance. On the technical side, you will explore how to understand, define, and improve your system architecture, align technical decisions with business goals, and cultivate strong technical practices that allow your team to make continuous changes to your systems with confidence. In addition to these responsibilities, Anemari highlights common challenges every tech lead will face. These include avoiding micromanagement, navigating difficult conversations, and addressing technical debt. For each, she offers practi- cal strategies you can apply immediately, grounded in her own experience. VI |

With the ideas, tools, and experiences Anemari shares, I am confident this book will help you navigate the uncertainty of the tech lead role and prepare you to lead with intent. No book can give you every answer, but this one offers you the tools to chart your own path as a tech lead. And that, in the end, is what leadership is all about. —Patrick Kua, CTO coach, founder of the Tech Lead Academy, coauthor of Building Evolutionary Architectures (with Neal Ford, Rebecca Parsons, and Pramod Sadalage; O’Reilly), and author of Talking with Tech Leads and The Retrospective Handbook (both CreateSpace) Berlin, Germany (August 2025) | VII

Preface Early in my career, I realized I wanted to become a tech lead, although at the time, my understanding of the role was limited. What motivated me most was the impact we could have as a team rather than my individual contributions. While the engineers around me were diving deep into the latest technologies and tackling more complex technical challenges, I found myself questioning the value of the work we were doing. I was more drawn to solving team-related problems and taking the initiative to move things forward. I wanted to have more influence on how the team operated, so when the scrum master left, I saw an opportunity and stepped into that role. While others were focused on building new features, I constantly found myself documenting the existing ones, improving communication, and streamlining our processes. To make it happen, I moved to another country and joined Thoughtworks: a company that supported my growth into the tech lead role. I started working with my tech lead at the time to develop the necessary skills, and I said yes to every training opportunity that came my way. When I learned that the team’s tech lead was leaving, I asked to take over. They said yes. Once I realized that the type of impact I wanted could happen only in the tech lead role, I began focusing on the skills I believed were necessary for the position. I worked hard to sharpen my technical abilities, thinking that to lead a technical team, I needed to be the most technical person on the team. I was wrong. The more I learned about the tech lead role, the more I felt like I didn’t know. There are just so many opinions out there on what the role actually is. The more I talked to other tech leads about it, the more I realized they didn’t know either. Everyone seems to have their own definition, but the tech industry cannot agree on what exactly the role is. ix

This confusion isn’t unique to the tech lead role; it applies to most roles in tech, from junior developer to CTO, or anything in between. But when it comes to the tech lead role, things get even more fuzzy. As proof, I couldn’t find a single book out there focusing solely on it. There are plenty of general engineering leadership books, but as a tech lead, it’s up to you to figure out what’s relevant to your specific situation. This can get overwhelming quickly, and I definitely felt that struggle when I was starting out. Why I Wrote This Book I wrote this book to save other tech leads, like you, from the painful process of going through countless resources, trying to figure out what applies to your specific role. You can think of it as your go-to guide for navigating the unique challenges of being a tech lead. This book draws from my personal experience as a tech lead at Thought- works, insights from other more and less seasoned tech leads I’ve worked with, and what I learned from training and coaching over 300 tech leads across various companies, cultures, and environments over the past three years. How to Effectively Use This Book No matter where you are in your journey as a tech lead—just starting out, mid-career, or very experienced—this book provides valuable insights, tools, and lessons. If you’re an aspiring tech lead, aiming to step into the role, I recommend starting with the first two chapters: Chapter 1, “The Role of a Tech Lead” This chapter gives you a clear, high-level picture of what the role actually involves. You’ll explore the day-to-day responsibilities, how to define the scope of the role in your context, what’s expected of you, and the different paths that can lead to becoming a tech lead. This chapter also helps you assess if the role is a good fit for you right now. Chapter 2, “How to Become a Tech Lead” Once you’ve decided you’re ready (or almost ready) to make the move, Chapter 2 helps you build a personal growth plan. It walks you through mindset shifts, how to assess your current strengths and gaps, and what steps to take to grow into the role with intention. It also highlights the com- mon challenges new tech leads face and how to navigate them early on. x | PREFACE

It’s also worth scanning through the entire book to familiarize yourself with the common scenarios you’ll likely encounter in the role. If you’ve just stepped into the role, this book will be your go-to reference for troubleshooting and solving the daily challenges you’ll face. It’s packed with real-world scenarios, so you can easily find the relevant chapters and get practical advice and ideas for handling specific issues. If you’ve been in the role for a while now, this book can help you refine your leadership skills by identifying areas for improvement, and discover new strategies for dealing with the ongoing challenges of the role. The more I was learning about the role from training, observing my experi- enced tech lead, and talking with others in the role, the clearer it became: being a tech lead is less about tech and more about people. When I finally stepped into the role myself, it all clicked: the tech lead is 100% more about people than tech. Reaching this conclusion was a long and challenging journey of self- development and learning, a process I see tech leads go through every day. That’s why this book addresses both the technical aspects and the equally important people and business side of the role. Conventions Used in This Book The following typographical conventions are used in this book: Italic Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions. O’Reilly Online Learning For more than 40 years, O’Reilly Media has provided tech- nology and business training, knowledge, and insight to help companies succeed. Our unique network of experts and innovators share their knowledge and expertise through books, articles, and our online learning platform. O’Reilly’s online learning platform gives you on-demand access to live training courses, in-depth learning paths, interactive coding environments, and a vast collection of text and video from O’Reilly and 200+ other publishers. For more information, visit https://oreilly.com. PREFACE | xi

How to Contact Us Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc. 141 Stony Circle, Suite 195 Santa Rosa, CA 95401 800-889-8969 (in the United States or Canada) 707-827-7019 (international or local) 707-829-0104 (fax) support@oreilly.com https://oreilly.com/about/contact.html We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. You can access this page at https://oreil.ly/leveling-up-tech- lead. For news and information about our books and courses, visit https:// oreilly.com. Find us on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/oreilly-media. Watch us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/oreillymedia. Acknowledgments First, I want to thank my partner, Radu Chilom. You’ve been there the whole time, through deadlines, meltdowns, and ups and downs. You encouraged me, debated leadership scenarios and technical stories with me at midnight, and kept me sane when the process made me a little crazy. Thank you! To my friends, Elena Garcia, Stefania Rosca, Sorin Mihai, Eduard Almasque, Elisa Cutrin, Valentina Servile, thank you not just for your thoughtful feedback on the book but for keeping my spirits high with advice, encouragement, and friendship. Many of you I met at Thoughtworks, and I’m grateful for every moment there. The people, the international network, the opportunities, and the trust pushed me out of my comfort zone and shaped the way I lead today. Much of what’s in this book is rooted in those experiences. A huge thank-you to everyone who showed interest in reviewing the book. When I asked for volunteers, I definitely didn’t expect more than 160 peo- ple, including friends, former colleagues, and even people I only knew from xii | PREFACE

LinkedIn. I couldn’t take everyone into the official reviewing process, but every application and comment boosted my confidence that this book was needed. Which brings me to my tech reviewers. Special thanks to those who read carefully, shared their stories and experience, debated topics with me, and made the book so much better: Alex Geogea, Sonu Kapoor, Jeff Zinger, Hermann (“Ham”) Vocke, Kaitlyn Tierney, Andra Popa, Ivo Pinto, Sergio Visinoni, Joe Sey- mour, Mireia Angles, Michael Di Prisco, Mihaela Pasculescu, Aleix Morgadas, Yanqi Luo, Alex Lau, Rodrigo Borrego, Dani Roman, Nicolas Gonzalez Avalis, Dariusz Sadowski, Dagna Bieda. To all the companies who trusted me to grow their tech leads, and to the tech leads themselves, whose challenges, questions, and stories inspired so much of this book, thank you. Every conversation shaped these pages. A warm thank-you to Pat Kua for your generous foreword and endorsement of this book, and to Birgitta Böckeler for your insights and collaboration on the AI sections, your thoughtful contributions made it stronger and more complete. And last but not least, my gratitude to the team at O’Reilly. It was a pleasure working with each and every one of you. David Michelson, who got me on board, my editors Jill Leonard, Gregory Hyman, and especially Shira Evans, thank you for your guidance, accountability, and support. You took my messy drafts and helped me shape them into something I’m truly proud of. And to all the other people who contributed in ways I may never know about, thank you. PREFACE | xiii

The Role of a Tech Lead The tech lead role is one of the most misunderstood positions in the tech indus- try. It’s a role that exists at the intersection of people, technology, and business, and yet there’s little consensus on what it actually means. This lack of clarity often leaves new tech leads feeling unsure about what’s expected of them and how to approach the role effectively. Every company seems to have its own version of the tech lead role, shaped by their culture, processes, and priorities. Some see the role as deeply technical, while others focus heavily on team dynamics and processes. Understanding these differences and defining what it means within your specific context is the first step to succeeding as a tech lead. That’s why, in this chapter, I’ll outline the essential aspects of the tech lead role to help you understand what to expect and how to approach it. I’ll begin by defining what a tech lead is, including the scope and daily responsibilities. Then, I’ll explore how to make sense of the expectations placed on you, whether you have a formal job description or not, and offer guidance on evaluating whether this role is right for you. I’ll also look at the different paths people take to become a tech lead, from transitioning within your current team to forming entirely new ones. Finally, I’ll cover the critical skills and mindset shifts you’ll need to go through in this transition. 1 | 1

What Is a Tech Lead? When I ask tech leads, “What’s expected of you?” the responses are wildly differ- ent, covering a wide range of skills and responsibilities. At one extreme, some describe the tech lead as the most technical person on the team, someone with deep expertise in the tech stack who makes all the decisions and contributes code daily, often at the same level as any other engineer. The role is seen as highly hands-on, deeply technical, and rooted in direct contributions to the team’s output. At the other end of the spectrum, the tech lead is described as someone who rarely codes, either due to lack of time or because they deliberately choose to focus on other priorities, like people, processes, and shielding the team from distractions. In this view, the tech lead is more of a facilitator, working closely with the product manager (PM) to manage the backlog and ensure smooth collaboration. Figure 1-1 shows a word cloud compiled from typical responses I get when training groups of tech leads and asking, “What words do you associate with ‘tech lead’?” Figure 1-1. Common words associated with “tech lead” 2 | LEVELING UP AS A TECH LEAD

These examples show just how varied the expectations can be, from being a hands-on technical expert to focusing entirely on people and processes. The reality is that the tech lead role sits somewhere in the middle, requiring a careful balance between technical leadership, team development, and stakeholder align- ment. That balance isn’t fixed. It can shift over time, depending on the maturity of your team, the phase of the project, or even the specific challenges you’re facing. A tech lead is expected to guide the team through decision making, ensuring that everyone’s input is heard and considered, rather than just making decisions unilaterally. This requires a breadth of knowledge, not just about technical areas like infrastructure, architecture, and the tech stack but also about the business context and stakeholder management. At the same time, a tech lead must support the team’s delivery while helping individual team members grow. It’s a role that demands both technical expertise and people skills, combining them effectively to build alignment, encourage teamwork, and deliver impactful results. This wide range of interpretations of the role can be confusing, especially for new tech leads, but it also highlights why the role is so critical, and why defining it within your context is essential. DEFINING THE SCOPE Given how widely the tech lead role can vary, it’s helpful to look at how different experts and industry leaders define it. Each brings a slightly different lens, tech- nical, organizational, or people-focused, reflecting the fluid nature of the role across different companies and team setups. Camille Fournier, in The Manager’s Path (O’Reilly), describes the tech lead as a senior individual contributor who helps a team of engineers work together effectively. She emphasizes coordination, communication, and supporting the team in delivering high-quality work. As she explains it, the tech lead isn’t necessarily the strongest coder but the one ensuring that things move forward smoothly. Will Larson, in Staff Engineer (self-published), presents the tech lead as an archetype of staff-plus roles: “The Tech Lead guides the approach and execution of a particular team. They partner closely with a single manager, but sometimes they partner with two or three managers within a focused area. Some companies THE ROLE OF A TECH LEAD | 3

also have a Tech Lead Manager role, which is similar to the Tech Lead archetype but exists on the engineering manager ladder and includes people management responsibilities.” His framing emphasizes the tech lead’s proximity to execution and operational leadership. Pat Kua, in his book Talking with Tech Leads (CreateSpace), defines the role as “a leader, responsible for a (software) development team, who spends at least 30 percent of their time writing code with the team.” His definition underscores the hybrid nature of the role: still technical but with an added layer of responsibil- ity for team effectiveness and communication. Pat’s work had a lasting influence on how I approached the role early in my career. One of my first tech lead trainings was with him, back when we were both at Thoughtworks, and many of the lessons from that experience continue to shape how I teach and support tech leads today. These perspectives highlight different, but overlapping, facets of the tech lead role: from deep technical execution to team coordination and stakeholder alignment. And that diversity reflects what I’ve consistently observed in practice. Drawing from my own experience as a tech lead, and from training hun- dreds of tech leads over the years, I’ve seen this role take shape in many forms. The tech leads I’ve worked with have come from a wide range of environments: product companies and consultancies, startups and large enterprises, and teams at varying levels of maturity. This includes fintech, ecommerce, and SaaS (soft- ware as a service) organizations; agile and less agile teams; both layered and flat hierarchies; and setups ranging from internal tooling to customer-facing product teams. Based on this broad exposure and firsthand experience, I’ve come to see a clear throughline in what great tech leads do. While the role flexes based on context, there’s a common core. Here’s how I define it: The tech lead is a software engineer responsible for leading a develop- ment team and accountable for the technical deliverables of that team. Being accountable for technical deliverables also means ensuring that the team’s work aligns with stakeholder expectations. This alignment places the tech lead role right at the intersection of people, business, and technology. It’s a balancing act that requires understanding both the technical and nontechnical aspects of the role, as shown in Figure 1-2. 4 | LEVELING UP AS A TECH LEAD