I was Recently Promoted to Team Lead, Here's What I Learned

So a few months ago my team lead resigned (left me) and I was next in line for his position 🐣. And wow my life has changed.

girl power!

I am in constant panic

Maybe it’s just me, but the thought that our bosses are going to ask me questions they’d think I know the answers to but don’t, is slowly killing me inside. Okay maybe that’s an exaggeration. (No it’s not)

But yes, I do feel like I’m in constant panic I have no idea how the other leads manage to do this with ease. People will discredit me fast because 1.) I'm still young and 2.) I am a girl and it takes longer for others to trust us 👩🏼‍🦳. Hello imposter syndrome!

Being kind goes a long way

An under appreciated skill! Losing our temper is the easiest way (and the worst way) to get our voices heard 📣. There may be times where my emotions get to me, specially when someone keeps on forgetting the rules despite being given multiple chances to improve 🤯. But at the end of the day, not fighting back is always a win. You know how they say that communication is the key. It's how people keeps on trusting you despite your/their mistakes or limits. 

I am not a patient person but I know now it's important for the role.

My teammates are better than me and they’re just getting started

I keep on having anxiety about stuff I don’t know. I also had these before but now I know I should’ve already learned them. Because I should be the one to know these things because what happens when they ask me? 🌧

And now I watch as my members implement stuff I only heard of but never tried, of stuff I had tried and failed to understand, of stuff that still feels alien to me after 3 years.

Of course this is great. They are not meant to be below me 📣. 

So many things to do

I really miss the time my routine was as simple as go to work > read a little > code > go home.

And the thing about my teammates becoming better and better each day is that I don’t have time to be better. I used to read, every morning. Medium articles (until they stopped being free 😭), links that come from my emails (Sidebar), anything really. And I’d still be able to finish my tasks.

Most of my days now consists of making sure everyone else is comfortable and at the same time produce my own awesome stuff. I spend a lot of time checking pull requests, approving requests, planning and meetings. I am also the go to of the other teams when there are problems.

It requires so much energy to focus and I'm only used to being focused in code. If it requires talking to multiple people, opening multiple tabs, downloading stuff in different versions, testing in different scenarios, and/or listing down multiple data then it's easy to lose my focus 🐩.

We are not meant to do everything 💯

I remember a time when I questioned everything to my team lead. Why are we using this? Why can’t we upgrade to this? Can we re organize our stuff for the millionth time?

Now I know what it feels like.

We have been using outdated dependencies, we have implemented a lot of ugly hacks, we have used multiple packages that does the same things, we have so many things that needs refactoring that we still haven’t touched.

There are so many places for us to improve. But we can’t do everything and software never really gets finished. We have deadlines. We have bosses that doesn’t think it’s a good idea to update what’s working. We have a million other things to do.

Documentation is everything 

I have only realized now that every question I repeatedly asked could’ve been avoided by documentation. My notes app (Bear App) is everything to me. I have everything in there so it’s both organized and messy at the same time. What’s important is it saved me multiple times.

So there was this one time I was requesting my team mate to update the labels he added in his test cases. He then replied by asking what is the guideline for writing these things? And then it hit me, they have no idea about the guidelines I’ve been enforcing us to follow.

Writing these things will help everyone ✍🏼, specially the people who will arrive long after I leave here.

I know we always say we don’t have time to do documentation but I also know now that so many time can be saved in the future if they exist.

---

To conclude, I both love and hate it! I was out of my comfort zone. I was constantly learning. I was helping others reach their potential.  ⭐️

But I have also realized this is not the path I want to take, at least not now. I find it harder waking up in the morning. I wasn't learning anything in terms of development. I forced myself to read books (fiction) as an escape to block my own thoughts.

I am only 23 years old, I think there's still so much I could learn from someone else instead of the other way around. 🐣