adamfortuna's review
4.0
I've been interested in managing other developers for a while and read quite a few books trying to continually get better at it (still learning!). This one offered quite a few new takes on this topic. The format of the book includes interviews with tech leads in various states of their career, with similar questions asked to each. Some had better takeaways than others, but the collective similarities also highlighted things I need to work more on.
andras's review
3.0
I liked how this book is not about the author telling you how to be a tech lead, it's about a bunch of different people telling you how to be a tech lead. It's a bit more evidence-based when N = 20 instead of N = 1.
Still, I struggled hard to finish this book. It became repetitive quite quickly. In a way, this was good because this lets you find common patterns and draw your own conclusions. On the other hand, this gets boring. Yes, you have to pay attention to the people. Finding time for coding is hard, yet important. Can't keep your head down, gotta understand business needs.
This leads me to my biggest problem, which might be related to the selected tech leads not being diverse enough. They were all from mid-sized companies doing waterfall development disguised as agile development. This resulted in a book that is full of agile dogma. After all, I'm fairly certain that not 100% of tech leads think that pair programming is the only way to produce software, and I would have liked to hear their take on tech leadership too.
Overall, I liked this book, though. There were some cool practical tips in it, and it was nice to see that others are struggling with the same problems as I am. I'm not alone, this is indeed hard, I will get better.
Still, I struggled hard to finish this book. It became repetitive quite quickly. In a way, this was good because this lets you find common patterns and draw your own conclusions. On the other hand, this gets boring. Yes, you have to pay attention to the people. Finding time for coding is hard, yet important. Can't keep your head down, gotta understand business needs.
This leads me to my biggest problem, which might be related to the selected tech leads not being diverse enough. They were all from mid-sized companies doing waterfall development disguised as agile development. This resulted in a book that is full of agile dogma. After all, I'm fairly certain that not 100% of tech leads think that pair programming is the only way to produce software, and I would have liked to hear their take on tech leadership too.
Overall, I liked this book, though. There were some cool practical tips in it, and it was nice to see that others are struggling with the same problems as I am. I'm not alone, this is indeed hard, I will get better.
icco's review
4.0
A bunch of interesting interviews. Only downside is they all have pretty similar backgrounds. Would have liked more class and experience diversity.
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