[Podcast] Teaching Tech Leads

“I’ve been a technical leader for eight years now and I guess I’m also still on my journey,” says Pat Kua, principal consultant at Thoughtworks and author of “Talking with Tech Leads”.

Pat has created a program to help aspiring tech leads with the first steps of their journey. I took the opportunity of the Europe Away Day 2015 to talk with him about the program which is called “Europe for Tech Leads (EU4T)”. The conversation is just under half an hour long.

In this episode, we talk about the role of a tech lead and how Pat is helping new tech leads on their journey. We talk about the responsibilities of a tech lead and how this can be very overwhelming in the beginning. We also discuss the importance of a technical vision, what distinguishes a technical vision from an architecture and how we can teach tech visioning.

Every tech lead has his own style, so Pat tells me. So if you are new to the job, you will need to develop your own style.

So, what should a participant in a tech lead program take out of it, I ask.

Pat responds, “I would like the participants to be comfortable with the many responsibilities a tech lead has to deal with. I’m not expecting them to be experts in every skill."

We close by talking about Pat’s Book “Talking with Tech Leads," which includes interesting interviews from tech leads all over the industry.

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