With the very first blog post, I want to share my development from a Software Engineer to a Team Lead. I did this change on this day exactly two years ago on November 1st, 2023.

My Role as Software Engineer

I have been employed at my current company since November 2021. I started as a L2 Software Engineer and back then, I contributed in a single team, without much contact to other teams. My company have a level system starting from L1 (Junior Engineer), L2 (Software Engineer), L3 (Senior Software Engineer) to L4 (Lead Software Engineer).

At that time, I didn’t focus much on my career, and I was happy with my L2 level. My main goal was establishing a profitable side business next besides my main job. I created video tutorials and sold them on Udemy. I don’t have to tell you that this didn’t work out for me.

In 2023, my company announced a change in this level system, which is basically a fork. Starting from L3, you could go the road into the “people” direction as a Team Lead, or still into the “tech” direction as “Lead Engineer”.

When I heard it the first time, I didn’t have any interests into going the people direction. I was mainly interested in technology. But over the next couple of weeks and months, I slowly realized what a great opportunity was offered to us.

A completely new career path was established basically overnight and there was demand for a few Team Leads, but the response was very modest. I thought if once all seats are occupied, chances are low to become Team Lead again. I eventually decided to tell my desire to my manager. To my surprise, he was open for it and agreed to continue.

Starting Incognito

I hadn’t fulfilled the official requirements for a Team Lead, because I was still an L2 engineer. My manager and I made a development plan for me. I should start in a new team without a Team Lead as an engineer and later, I can transition to the Team Lead role. In hindsight, this approach caused confusion, because I somehow needed to act as Team Lead without actually being one. I observed the team behavior and dynamics and over the time I tried to improve collaboration, communication and engagement of my peers.

After almost a year, the big news was released that I’ll take over the role as a Team Lead. At that point, I don’t think this was much of a surprise to everyone. Since I’m was now officially a Team Lead, I got assigned to a leadership training.

Leadership Training

The leadership training was organized by an external consultancy and hosted within the offices of my company. It was a mixture of on-site and off-site events. As you might imagine, the on-site events were the best and I really took much out of it. We did some role play and talked about case studies. The most interesting part for me were the sessions, where the other Team Leads shared the issues they had in their teams.

What has changed for me

Since then, my daily tasks have been changed. I roughly spend 50% to 80% of my time with software engineering, the rest is more about coordination and having biweekly 1-on-1s with my peers. I really enjoy talking with them about work or about private stuff. It’s also fascinating to see how people use their 1-on-1s with me differently, for example some have an agenda, and we talk about their personal development, while others were pretty reserved and hardly speak anything.

Summary

I’m glad that I got the opportunity to be a Team Lead for my team. It was career-wise a right decision, because I could extend my radius of influence and I can achieve so much more now.

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