From Developer to Tech Lead

Moving from an Individual Contributor (IC) to a Tech Lead is a big shift. You’re no longer measured only by the quality of your code, but by the impact of the team’s output.

When I first stepped into a Tech Lead role, I assumed it meant “same work, bigger title and more meetings.” In reality, it was a complete mindset change: from owning tasks to owning outcomes, from optimizing my code to optimizing how the team works.

In this post, I’ll share how that transition looked in practice, the mistakes I made, and the habits that helped me stay technical while leading a frontend team.

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What Actually Changes When You Become a Tech Lead

On paper, your responsibilities might sound simple: “Own the technical direction,” “mentor the team,” “align with stakeholders.” In practice, here’s what really changes.

1. Your Success Metric Changes

As a developer, success is:

• Tickets closed
• Bugs fixed
• Features shipped

As a Tech Lead, success is:

• The team delivering predictably and sustainably
• Fewer production issues and smarter designs
• A codebase that new developers can understand and contribute to
• Stakeholders trusting your team

You still write code, but your primary output is the team’s velocity and quality, not your personal commit history.

2. You Move From Doing to Enabling

Previously:

• You picked up tasks from the board.
• You went deep into implementation details.
• You optimized your own workflow.

Now:

• You break down complex features into clear tasks.
• You assign work based on strengths and growth areas.
• You unblock others instead of only unblocking yourself.

If you catch yourself thinking, “It will be faster if I just do it myself,” that’s usually a sign you’re still thinking as an IC, not as a lead.

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Core Challenges in the Transition

1. Balancing Code and Meetings

This is the classic Tech Lead problem.

• Stakeholder syncs
• Refinements and planning
• 1:1s and mentoring
• Design reviews

All of these eat into your coding time.

What helped me:

• Protecting deep work blocks: I blocked 2–3 hour windows on my calendar purely for technical work and treated them like real meetings.
• Choosing the right tasks: I picked tasks that were:
  • Architecturally important, or
  • Too ambiguous for juniors, or
  • Cross-cutting (affecting multiple areas)

I avoided taking tickets that juniors could handle independently. That code time is better used for pairing, reviewing, and designing systems.

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2. Mentoring Without Micromanaging

You’ll often know a faster or cleaner way to implement something. The temptation is to take over or rewrite.

Signs you’re micromanaging:

• You “fix” every pull request yourself.
• You rewrite code quietly instead of giving feedback.
• You always assign critical tasks to yourself or one trusted dev.

A better approach:

• Use PR reviews as coaching, not just gatekeeping.
• Ask questions instead of dictating:
  • “What happens if the API is slow here?”
  • “How will this scale if we add more filters?”
• Pair program on tricky parts, then let them drive subsequent tasks.
• Accept that sometimes a “good enough” solution written by a teammate is more valuable than your “perfect” solution that doesn’t help them grow.

You’re not trying to be the smartest person in the room. You’re trying to make everyone else more effective.

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3. Making Technical Decisions With Long-Term Impact

As a Tech Lead, you’re often the person answering:

• “Should we use this new library?”
• “Do we refactor this module now or later?”
• “Is this API contract OK, or will we regret it?”

This can feel heavy because these decisions echo for years.

How I learned to decide faster and smarter:

1. Clarify the constraints

   • Deadlines, team skills, critical use cases, performance requirements.
   • A “perfect” solution that no one can maintain is not a good solution.

2. Write quick design notes

   • A short document with:
     • Problem statement
     • Options considered
     • Pros/cons
     • Decision and reasoning
   • This avoids “why did we choose this?” months later.

3. Prefer reversible decisions

   • When possible, isolate risky decisions behind interfaces or feature flags.
   • Make it cheap to rollback or iterate.

4. Involve the team

   • Ask seniors and even mid-level devs to review designs.
   • This builds shared ownership and reduces the “bus factor.”

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How to Stay Hands-On as a Tech Lead

Many leads drift away from code over time. If you want to stay close to the codebase, you need to be intentional about it.

Here’s what worked for me.

1. Choose Your Coding Work Strategically

Instead of hoarding tasks, I focused on:

• Spikes and prototypes

  • Exploring new frameworks or patterns.
  • Creating minimal examples others could extend.

• Core architectural pieces

  • Routing, state management, design system setup, API clients.
  • These are good places for a lead to set patterns.

• Refactoring critical areas

  • Paying down tech debt in hotspots.
  • While refactoring, I documented patterns and created examples for the team.

2. Use Code Reviews as a Learning Loop

Reviews are where you understand:

• How the team thinks about architecture.
• Where patterns are unclear.
• Which areas of the codebase are confusing.

Good review habits:

• Comment on why, not just what:
  • Instead of: “Use debounce here.”
  • Try: “We should debounce here to avoid flooding the API when the user types quickly.”
• Highlight and praise good patterns, not just point out issues.
• Suggest concrete examples when you recommend changes.

Over time, your comments evolve from “fix this” to “here’s a pattern we want everywhere.”

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The First 90 Days as a New Tech Lead

If you’ve just become a Tech Lead, here’s a simple roadmap for your first three months.

Month 1: Observe and Map

Focus on understanding:

• People

  • Who are the strong seniors?
  • Who needs more support?
  • What does each person enjoy working on?

• Codebase

  • Where are the pain points?
  • Which modules break often?
  • What’s hard for newcomers to understand?

• Process

  • How do tickets move from idea to production?
  • Where are the delays? Refinement, QA, deployments?

Deliverables in Month 1:

• A simple team map (strengths, interests).
• A list of technical hotspots.
• A list of process bottlenecks.

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Month 2: Clarify and Align

Now that you’ve observed, start nudging things in a better direction.

• Set expectations with the team

  • How you want PRs to look.
  • How to ask for help.
  • What “done” really means (tests, docs, monitoring).

• Align with stakeholders

  • Clarify priorities with product / managers.
  • Make sure you understand what really matters for the next quarter.

• Introduce small improvements

  • Add lint rules, basic CI checks, or better logging.
  • Start a light design review process before large features are implemented.

Deliverables in Month 2:

• A short “How we work” doc pinned for the team.
• At least one small process improvement in place.
• A shared understanding of near-term priorities.

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Month 3: Execute and Stabilize

You don’t need a revolution. You need consistent, visible improvements.

Focus on:

• Reliability

  • Reduce production incidents.
  • Add monitors or alerts for key flows.

• Predictability

  • Improve estimates by breaking work into smaller, clearer tasks.
  • Track how often you meet your sprint goals and why you miss them.

• Growth

  • Give each team member at least one slightly challenging task and support them through it.
  • Start regular 1:1s if not already in place.

Deliverables in Month 3:

• Fewer “emergency” issues.
• A more predictable sprint or release cadence.
• At least one clear growth story per teammate (“X handled Y independently for the first time”).

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Common Mistakes New Tech Leads Make

1. Trying to Do Everything Themselves

You overwork, the team under-grows, and burnout is almost guaranteed.

Fix: Deliberately delegate. Even if it’s slower initially, the long-term payoff is huge.

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2. Avoiding Difficult Conversations

Maybe a developer’s quality is consistently low or a stakeholder is pushing unrealistic deadlines.

Fix:

• Address issues early with facts and examples.
• Focus on behaviors and outcomes, not personalities.
• Remember: ignoring problems is not kindness; it’s postponing pain.

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3. Neglecting Documentation

When you’re busy, documentation feels optional. Later, you pay that price multiple times as you repeat yourself to every new joiner.

Fix:

• Maintain a lightweight “Team Handbook”:
  • How to run the app locally
  • Coding conventions
  • Testing and release steps
  • Links to key dashboards / docs

This becomes a force multiplier for onboarding and day-to-day work.

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Daily and Weekly Habits That Help

Here are some practical routines that made the role sustainable for me.

Daily

• Check the board: identify blockers early.
• Review critical PRs before starting new work.
• Reserve at least one block of time for focused coding or design.
• Write quick notes: decisions made, risks spotted, follow-ups needed.

Weekly

• Run or participate actively in planning/refinement.

• Do a short retro, even informally:

  • What went well?
  • What felt painful?
  • What will we change next week?

• Have at least one coaching moment:

  • Pair programming
  • Walking someone through a design
  • Helping debug a tricky issue

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Final Thoughts

Transitioning from Developer to Tech Lead is less about a title and more about a shift in identity:

• From “I write code” to “I help my team ship great products.”
• From “my work” to “our work.”
• From “my growth” to “the team’s growth.”

You don’t need to have all the answers to be a good Tech Lead. You do need to:

• Stay curious.
• Communicate clearly.
• Care about your team’s success as much as your own.

If you’re about to step into a Tech Lead role, remember: you were chosen not just because you can write good code, but because you can help others do their best work too.