I went to a conference on tech leadership, and you should too
A conference on engineering management and leadership? Sounds useless…
In the past few weeks, I got a lot of those. For some reason in our community (or at least, in the subset of it I am currently involved with), a tech conference should be about learning actual technical skills (this new language, that new tool or that totally new way of doing things enabled by your favorite language’s totally unreadable new syntax) and can’t really be just about how to be a better tech leader or engineering manager.
Fortunately, my company, Deezer, didn’t share this feeling and a few days ago, I had the chance to attend the Lead Dev Berlin 2019 conference to learn about and reflect on what it means to be a tech lead today. So, first of all, let me thank @DeezerDevs and our Tech Community Ambassador Guillaume Grillat for supporting this. You rock 🙇♂️.
Curious to know how it went?
Read on and I’ll try to explain why you should grab a ticket for the next edition, or any of the other Lead Dev conferences they organise around the globe. You can find the list here.
Building better technical leaders
The goal of the Lead Dev conferences is pretty straight-forward, and it’s the first thing you read on their website: by sharing “inspiring stories and practical advice on leading and managing technical teams based on the themes of teams, tech and tools”, they aim to help you become a better technical leader.
This year in Berlin, we learned about the many challenges paving the way of the Lead Developer in a great opening talk by Pat Kua (Chief Scientist at N26), where each of the potential pitfalls were monsters you need to overcome in your quest to becoming a better tech lead.
We also reflected on how, when moving from Individual Contributor to Manager, all your software engineering practices were not lost but could become strengths to leverage in your new role. nicky thompson’s…
