Space for Growth

How to create space for your team to grow

The What

The biggest mindset change from an Individual Contributor role to a Leader role — How to grow your team.

The How

You should put growth into 2 dimensions, vertical growth is awesome, however, horizontal growth is critical for team happiness and retention.

Domains

• Front end & BFF: web framework, user experience, browser support, JS/TS, etc

• Backend: database, microservice, architecture, cache, search, etc

• Data: data engineering, data wrangling, data science, data analysing, A/B testing, etc

• DevOps: security, CI/CD, network, etc

• Practice: dev experience, best practice, code quality, code review, delivery process, etc

• …there are more…

Horizontal growth

• Learn from others within / outside your domain

• Better collaboration among domains make a smooth delivery pipeline

• Knowledge sharing help build up a good team culture and avoid the single point of failure

• Informal mentorship is very helpful

Vertical growth

• Be clear about Engineering Levels: Associate, Mid-level, Senior, Staff, Senior Staff, etc

• Delegated chat about career development

• Always help your team grow

✅Exceptions

🔴Red Flags

• Separate the team into support & Innovation // It always falls over

• A player leaves if there is no space to grow

📜Tips

• Be inclusive. We are one team.

• Semi durable squads & swap // trade short-term productivity to long-term growth

🕳 Pitfalls

• You as a Tech Lead is always on the critical path

• You as a Tech Lead is always on the critical path