Software Engineering at Google

Chapter 5. How to Lead a Team

Written by Brian Fitzpatrick

Edited by Riona MacNamara

We’ve covered a lot of ground so far on the culture and composition of teams writing software, and in this chapter, we’ll take a look at the person ultimately responsible for making it all work.

No team can function well without a leader, especially at Google, where engineering is almost exclusively a team endeavor. At Google, we recognize two different leadership roles. A Manager is a leader of people, whereas a Tech Lead leads technology efforts. Although the responsibilities of these two roles require similar planning skills, they require quite different people skills.

A boat without a captain is nothing more than a floating waiting room: unless someone grabs the rudder and starts the engine, it’s just going to drift along aimlessly with the current. A piece of software is just like that boat: if no one pilots it, you’re left with a group of engineers burning up valuable time, just sitting around waiting for something to happen (or worse, still writing code that you don’t need). Although this chapter is about people management and technical leadership, it is still worth a read if you’re an individual contributor because it will likely help you understand your own leaders a bit better.

Managers and Tech Leads (and Both)

Whereas every engineering team generally has a leader, they acquire those leaders in different ways. This is certainly true at Google; sometimes an experienced manager comes ...