Becoming a Lead

A run of posts for the engineer who has just become responsible for other engineers, about the things that look like doing the job well and are quietly the reason you are not.

Every part of this is about the same thing, from a different angle.

You were promoted because you were good at the work. The habits that made you good at it are strong, practised and immediately available, and they are now the wrong ones. That is uncomfortable enough on its own. What makes it hard is that none of it feels like a mistake while you are making it. Keeping the difficult work looks like carrying your weight. Running a tight status meeting looks diligent. Handing something to someone you trust looks like exactly what you are supposed to be doing.

So the signal does not arrive as failure. It arrives late, from outside your own reasoning, usually from someone who had to be brave enough to tell you.

These are the ones I got wrong, what it cost, and what I would do differently. Read them in order if you have just moved into the role. Otherwise the titles are specific enough to go straight to the one you recognise.