Technology leadership is no less than an uphill battle, Are you ready for it?
There is hardly a software company these days with no one spearheading the technology team. The company’s size, career path, and growth path from an engineer to CTO or the technology leader differ enormously. Still, one probable unique attribute is the “superlative mindset” of these people who evolve from low/mid-level engineers or technology managers to technology leaders.
There is a definitive difference between being a technology manager and a technology leader. Technology leadership is an uphill battle where a leader leads from the front. At times, this leader is not only expected to produce the best solutions and strategies but also be hands-on with code and technology at the grassroots level; it’s no more of ensuring “my team” achieves the target KPI in period or performs the best in the organization, it’s a responsibility to generate materialistic and tangible outcomes for the company to be successful and competitive in the market with a blend of unique value prop that help drives the sales & business.
Technology managers and software engineers are undoubtedly the essential pillars of technology companies and technology leaders, but it comes with a shift from being responsible And accountable.
It happens that good developers aren’t good leaders and the other way around. And that they don’t need to be. Leading a team could be a very different role than building software. When leading, you specialize in unleashing the ability of your team. Software coder does the identical, but with the technology. As a Software engineer, when you call communication, lack of specs and requirements or personality clashes as problems, for the technical leader, they’re challenges to face. So, if you, engineer, is offered a promotion to a technical leadership position, take some time to ponder. It isn’t the following level in software engineering with a blend of people management. It can be a whole new world and a life you have ever imagined.
Prakhar Rawat, a seasoned technology leader and CTO of Simple.io, an innovative company in the Martech domain whose products are built on Microsoft power-platform, expressed his views, “Leading Technology & Engineering teams is tough. It’s stuffed with challenge after challenge, highly stressful situations, and continual second-guessing of your decisions. However, even with all those challenges, it can become one in all the foremost rewarding roles you’ll be able to step into throughout your career. You’re in an influential position to deliver remarkable value to an organisation, mentor your team towards engineering excellence, and help shape the careers of each member within your team. You have got the chance to form a culture within your engineering team that individuals will positively remember for the remainder of their career and take those learnings into future organisations.”
Here are some common traits that can help you decide if being a technology leader is something you want to pursue in your life.
- Quick responses, assessments & triage on key challenges
- R&D – research and development, or you can also call it researching over 10 hours a day, or maybe a whole day and working on Proofs of concepts for hours
- The attitude of being a servant technology leader, #Teamfirst
- Being accountable for mistakes done by the most junior engineer and deal with a smile
- Creating the tech
- Delivering the tech
- Selling the tech – Yes, being a Technology leader or a CTO doesn’t mean that your life is safe between the code, servers, and solutioning the tech; it’s more than that. As per the Gartner report published in April 2021, 62% of technology leaders of fortune 500 companies participated in the selling process of their product &/or services.