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What if I'm a better developer than my Team Leader?
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Based on his commits(daily ones), I see that he writes lots of bad code and doesn't follow any good practices, how should I approach this situation?
I tried talking to him about better ways of writing code like SOLID, DRY, etc (tried to be as friendly as possible), and I'm always reviewing junior devs' code but it feels like it's a lost battle because for every line of code I refactor there will be 10 new ones and there is no accountability for bad code.
I don't expect the junior devs on the team to know about good practices so I can't blame them but the team leader should know, right??? So what if I'm a better developer than my Team Leader? Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?
management negotiation code
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
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up vote
1
down vote
favorite
Based on his commits(daily ones), I see that he writes lots of bad code and doesn't follow any good practices, how should I approach this situation?
I tried talking to him about better ways of writing code like SOLID, DRY, etc (tried to be as friendly as possible), and I'm always reviewing junior devs' code but it feels like it's a lost battle because for every line of code I refactor there will be 10 new ones and there is no accountability for bad code.
I don't expect the junior devs on the team to know about good practices so I can't blame them but the team leader should know, right??? So what if I'm a better developer than my Team Leader? Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?
management negotiation code
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
2
"Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?" - are you actually in a position to do this? Who would grant you this role? What kind of leverage do you have? What would you expect the team lead to do in response to your attempt? Tread lightly here. Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder.
– Joe Strazzere
6 mins ago
1
"Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder." - @JoeStrazzere read my mind. Team Leaders are not just determined by coding skills, but also, uhm, leadership skills, as well as communication... If you write better code than your Lead you should pat yourself on the back and keep doing your good work. If you are indeed better than him your reviews and delivered work will speak for themselves and perhaps eventually mean a promotion for you... do you want to be a team leader?
– DarkCygnus
4 mins ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
favorite
up vote
1
down vote
favorite
Based on his commits(daily ones), I see that he writes lots of bad code and doesn't follow any good practices, how should I approach this situation?
I tried talking to him about better ways of writing code like SOLID, DRY, etc (tried to be as friendly as possible), and I'm always reviewing junior devs' code but it feels like it's a lost battle because for every line of code I refactor there will be 10 new ones and there is no accountability for bad code.
I don't expect the junior devs on the team to know about good practices so I can't blame them but the team leader should know, right??? So what if I'm a better developer than my Team Leader? Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?
management negotiation code
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
Based on his commits(daily ones), I see that he writes lots of bad code and doesn't follow any good practices, how should I approach this situation?
I tried talking to him about better ways of writing code like SOLID, DRY, etc (tried to be as friendly as possible), and I'm always reviewing junior devs' code but it feels like it's a lost battle because for every line of code I refactor there will be 10 new ones and there is no accountability for bad code.
I don't expect the junior devs on the team to know about good practices so I can't blame them but the team leader should know, right??? So what if I'm a better developer than my Team Leader? Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?
management negotiation code
management negotiation code
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
asked 19 mins ago
BGomez
6
6
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
New contributor
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
BGomez is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
2
"Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?" - are you actually in a position to do this? Who would grant you this role? What kind of leverage do you have? What would you expect the team lead to do in response to your attempt? Tread lightly here. Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder.
– Joe Strazzere
6 mins ago
1
"Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder." - @JoeStrazzere read my mind. Team Leaders are not just determined by coding skills, but also, uhm, leadership skills, as well as communication... If you write better code than your Lead you should pat yourself on the back and keep doing your good work. If you are indeed better than him your reviews and delivered work will speak for themselves and perhaps eventually mean a promotion for you... do you want to be a team leader?
– DarkCygnus
4 mins ago
add a comment |Â
2
"Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?" - are you actually in a position to do this? Who would grant you this role? What kind of leverage do you have? What would you expect the team lead to do in response to your attempt? Tread lightly here. Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder.
– Joe Strazzere
6 mins ago
1
"Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder." - @JoeStrazzere read my mind. Team Leaders are not just determined by coding skills, but also, uhm, leadership skills, as well as communication... If you write better code than your Lead you should pat yourself on the back and keep doing your good work. If you are indeed better than him your reviews and delivered work will speak for themselves and perhaps eventually mean a promotion for you... do you want to be a team leader?
– DarkCygnus
4 mins ago
2
2
"Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?" - are you actually in a position to do this? Who would grant you this role? What kind of leverage do you have? What would you expect the team lead to do in response to your attempt? Tread lightly here. Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder.
– Joe Strazzere
6 mins ago
"Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?" - are you actually in a position to do this? Who would grant you this role? What kind of leverage do you have? What would you expect the team lead to do in response to your attempt? Tread lightly here. Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder.
– Joe Strazzere
6 mins ago
1
1
"Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder." - @JoeStrazzere read my mind. Team Leaders are not just determined by coding skills, but also, uhm, leadership skills, as well as communication... If you write better code than your Lead you should pat yourself on the back and keep doing your good work. If you are indeed better than him your reviews and delivered work will speak for themselves and perhaps eventually mean a promotion for you... do you want to be a team leader?
– DarkCygnus
4 mins ago
"Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder." - @JoeStrazzere read my mind. Team Leaders are not just determined by coding skills, but also, uhm, leadership skills, as well as communication... If you write better code than your Lead you should pat yourself on the back and keep doing your good work. If you are indeed better than him your reviews and delivered work will speak for themselves and perhaps eventually mean a promotion for you... do you want to be a team leader?
– DarkCygnus
4 mins ago
add a comment |Â
1 Answer
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up vote
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Hahahahah!
A common mistake in engineering is that "the team lead has to be the best and if they're not I can haz they're burger".
Sadly, the term is "team lead", not "best developer".
Think of it like this - Abraham Lincoln lead the Civil War, but he was not a general, nor a great fighter.
Steve Jobs led Apple, but he was not a great engineer.
Leadership isn't about being the best - it's about inspiring others to follow you, about guiding a ship that has many, many moving parts - some of which want to go the wrong way, some of which want to replace the leader! - to the end destination.
Just because you're a competent engineer will not make you a good engineering manager, nor even a team lead. If you cannot convince your team lead to follow best practices, then what hope do you have of leading?
If your idea of leading is simply "i want an authority position so people will do as I say" then I might suggest joining the army. But you'll struggle to make General even there.
And what joy would you get from imposing this view? Do you even know why SOLID and DRY are good? Are you aware that in Clean Coding, Robert Martin pines for the days of cut and paste code? Just knowing, and using, a principle isn't enough to convince others why it's good. Maybe doing that makes the development time shorter, or maybe your team lead is of the (sensible) opinion that code cut and paste a few times is much more simple and easier to handle than a sprawling factory pattern beast that is combining fundamentally different business logics.
If you want to lead, then I suggest you instead setup a weekly hour long team meeting, where you walk everyone through replacing some code and discussing the implications - engineers like chatting about code, and this is a good way to get consensus. Or go read up on Agile and push something like Kanban.
But don't get into the trap that sheer skill is equivalent to leadership. It's rarely true in any other aspect of human life, it's certainly not "more true" in engineering. Why would it be?
Leadership needs a vision, and leadership needs sales. Of the two, sales is the more important. Vision might defines how successful and well remembered you'll be - but sales gets you there. There are plenty of leaders with little vision, but I'm not sure there are any who cannot sell.
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
add a comment |Â
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
0
down vote
Hahahahah!
A common mistake in engineering is that "the team lead has to be the best and if they're not I can haz they're burger".
Sadly, the term is "team lead", not "best developer".
Think of it like this - Abraham Lincoln lead the Civil War, but he was not a general, nor a great fighter.
Steve Jobs led Apple, but he was not a great engineer.
Leadership isn't about being the best - it's about inspiring others to follow you, about guiding a ship that has many, many moving parts - some of which want to go the wrong way, some of which want to replace the leader! - to the end destination.
Just because you're a competent engineer will not make you a good engineering manager, nor even a team lead. If you cannot convince your team lead to follow best practices, then what hope do you have of leading?
If your idea of leading is simply "i want an authority position so people will do as I say" then I might suggest joining the army. But you'll struggle to make General even there.
And what joy would you get from imposing this view? Do you even know why SOLID and DRY are good? Are you aware that in Clean Coding, Robert Martin pines for the days of cut and paste code? Just knowing, and using, a principle isn't enough to convince others why it's good. Maybe doing that makes the development time shorter, or maybe your team lead is of the (sensible) opinion that code cut and paste a few times is much more simple and easier to handle than a sprawling factory pattern beast that is combining fundamentally different business logics.
If you want to lead, then I suggest you instead setup a weekly hour long team meeting, where you walk everyone through replacing some code and discussing the implications - engineers like chatting about code, and this is a good way to get consensus. Or go read up on Agile and push something like Kanban.
But don't get into the trap that sheer skill is equivalent to leadership. It's rarely true in any other aspect of human life, it's certainly not "more true" in engineering. Why would it be?
Leadership needs a vision, and leadership needs sales. Of the two, sales is the more important. Vision might defines how successful and well remembered you'll be - but sales gets you there. There are plenty of leaders with little vision, but I'm not sure there are any who cannot sell.
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
Hahahahah!
A common mistake in engineering is that "the team lead has to be the best and if they're not I can haz they're burger".
Sadly, the term is "team lead", not "best developer".
Think of it like this - Abraham Lincoln lead the Civil War, but he was not a general, nor a great fighter.
Steve Jobs led Apple, but he was not a great engineer.
Leadership isn't about being the best - it's about inspiring others to follow you, about guiding a ship that has many, many moving parts - some of which want to go the wrong way, some of which want to replace the leader! - to the end destination.
Just because you're a competent engineer will not make you a good engineering manager, nor even a team lead. If you cannot convince your team lead to follow best practices, then what hope do you have of leading?
If your idea of leading is simply "i want an authority position so people will do as I say" then I might suggest joining the army. But you'll struggle to make General even there.
And what joy would you get from imposing this view? Do you even know why SOLID and DRY are good? Are you aware that in Clean Coding, Robert Martin pines for the days of cut and paste code? Just knowing, and using, a principle isn't enough to convince others why it's good. Maybe doing that makes the development time shorter, or maybe your team lead is of the (sensible) opinion that code cut and paste a few times is much more simple and easier to handle than a sprawling factory pattern beast that is combining fundamentally different business logics.
If you want to lead, then I suggest you instead setup a weekly hour long team meeting, where you walk everyone through replacing some code and discussing the implications - engineers like chatting about code, and this is a good way to get consensus. Or go read up on Agile and push something like Kanban.
But don't get into the trap that sheer skill is equivalent to leadership. It's rarely true in any other aspect of human life, it's certainly not "more true" in engineering. Why would it be?
Leadership needs a vision, and leadership needs sales. Of the two, sales is the more important. Vision might defines how successful and well remembered you'll be - but sales gets you there. There are plenty of leaders with little vision, but I'm not sure there are any who cannot sell.
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
up vote
0
down vote
Hahahahah!
A common mistake in engineering is that "the team lead has to be the best and if they're not I can haz they're burger".
Sadly, the term is "team lead", not "best developer".
Think of it like this - Abraham Lincoln lead the Civil War, but he was not a general, nor a great fighter.
Steve Jobs led Apple, but he was not a great engineer.
Leadership isn't about being the best - it's about inspiring others to follow you, about guiding a ship that has many, many moving parts - some of which want to go the wrong way, some of which want to replace the leader! - to the end destination.
Just because you're a competent engineer will not make you a good engineering manager, nor even a team lead. If you cannot convince your team lead to follow best practices, then what hope do you have of leading?
If your idea of leading is simply "i want an authority position so people will do as I say" then I might suggest joining the army. But you'll struggle to make General even there.
And what joy would you get from imposing this view? Do you even know why SOLID and DRY are good? Are you aware that in Clean Coding, Robert Martin pines for the days of cut and paste code? Just knowing, and using, a principle isn't enough to convince others why it's good. Maybe doing that makes the development time shorter, or maybe your team lead is of the (sensible) opinion that code cut and paste a few times is much more simple and easier to handle than a sprawling factory pattern beast that is combining fundamentally different business logics.
If you want to lead, then I suggest you instead setup a weekly hour long team meeting, where you walk everyone through replacing some code and discussing the implications - engineers like chatting about code, and this is a good way to get consensus. Or go read up on Agile and push something like Kanban.
But don't get into the trap that sheer skill is equivalent to leadership. It's rarely true in any other aspect of human life, it's certainly not "more true" in engineering. Why would it be?
Leadership needs a vision, and leadership needs sales. Of the two, sales is the more important. Vision might defines how successful and well remembered you'll be - but sales gets you there. There are plenty of leaders with little vision, but I'm not sure there are any who cannot sell.
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
Hahahahah!
A common mistake in engineering is that "the team lead has to be the best and if they're not I can haz they're burger".
Sadly, the term is "team lead", not "best developer".
Think of it like this - Abraham Lincoln lead the Civil War, but he was not a general, nor a great fighter.
Steve Jobs led Apple, but he was not a great engineer.
Leadership isn't about being the best - it's about inspiring others to follow you, about guiding a ship that has many, many moving parts - some of which want to go the wrong way, some of which want to replace the leader! - to the end destination.
Just because you're a competent engineer will not make you a good engineering manager, nor even a team lead. If you cannot convince your team lead to follow best practices, then what hope do you have of leading?
If your idea of leading is simply "i want an authority position so people will do as I say" then I might suggest joining the army. But you'll struggle to make General even there.
And what joy would you get from imposing this view? Do you even know why SOLID and DRY are good? Are you aware that in Clean Coding, Robert Martin pines for the days of cut and paste code? Just knowing, and using, a principle isn't enough to convince others why it's good. Maybe doing that makes the development time shorter, or maybe your team lead is of the (sensible) opinion that code cut and paste a few times is much more simple and easier to handle than a sprawling factory pattern beast that is combining fundamentally different business logics.
If you want to lead, then I suggest you instead setup a weekly hour long team meeting, where you walk everyone through replacing some code and discussing the implications - engineers like chatting about code, and this is a good way to get consensus. Or go read up on Agile and push something like Kanban.
But don't get into the trap that sheer skill is equivalent to leadership. It's rarely true in any other aspect of human life, it's certainly not "more true" in engineering. Why would it be?
Leadership needs a vision, and leadership needs sales. Of the two, sales is the more important. Vision might defines how successful and well remembered you'll be - but sales gets you there. There are plenty of leaders with little vision, but I'm not sure there are any who cannot sell.
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
answered 3 mins ago
bharal
11.4k22453
11.4k22453
add a comment |Â
add a comment |Â
BGomez is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
BGomez is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
BGomez is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
BGomez is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
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2
"Should I try to "take his place" as a team leader?" - are you actually in a position to do this? Who would grant you this role? What kind of leverage do you have? What would you expect the team lead to do in response to your attempt? Tread lightly here. Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder.
– Joe Strazzere
6 mins ago
1
"Being a leader is about more than being just the best coder." - @JoeStrazzere read my mind. Team Leaders are not just determined by coding skills, but also, uhm, leadership skills, as well as communication... If you write better code than your Lead you should pat yourself on the back and keep doing your good work. If you are indeed better than him your reviews and delivered work will speak for themselves and perhaps eventually mean a promotion for you... do you want to be a team leader?
– DarkCygnus
4 mins ago