After a year spent interviewing some of the biggest names in tech, here are the 5 best leadership lessons I’ve learned as host of the Dev Interrupted podcast.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. Three years into my software engineering career I was loving life. I could fix anything in the codebase with no doubts in my ability. I was confident, too. Most 24 year olds are. When I was offered the opportunity to become a dev team lead I jumped at the chance. With so much confidence, what could go wrong? The first few months hit me like a freight train. I might have been a good developer, but I wasn’t a good leader — not yet. It was a humbling experience that I continue to grow from to this day. Great leaders understand that learning is a process that evolves over time, but only if you open yourself up. In the past year as the host of the Dev Interrupted podcast, I have had the pleasure of interviewing and learning from some of the best engineering leaders in the business. Here are 5 of their most inspiring lessons: Brendan Burns, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Brendan is widely known as one of the co-founders of Kubernetes. But he is also responsible for managing over 650 engineers at Microsoft. Even though Brendan takes time to schedule as many one on ones as possible — sometimes as many as 14 in one day, and something he views as a priority as more teams become remote — he knows such large teams can only be successfully managed through delegation. Let go of the instinct to jump into every project. It’s ok if your teams make mistakes. They’re going to learn, but only if you give them the space and agency to grow. Stepping away from micromanaging can feel scary, but it will set your organization up for long term success and your employees will thank you for it.
