I see a tremendous lack of information for Team Leads (either people management or technical lead). I've been working as a senior QA and been burning out for years! No matter which team I go to, I always end up with a boss who's very happy with my performance and starts loading me with a constantly increasing workload. This continues in spite of my saying that I don't have the capacity to take on any more work. Does anyone know how hectic or how hard is a QA Team Lead's role exactly? I am not saying an IDEAL team lead. But someone who's just managing to survive. It doesn't seem to be a difficult job. I've seen people not taking any decisions, passing along all decisions to the team, report generation, status details etc - all the work gets passed down to the team. Whatever they report gets passed up to the manager. No matter what work the manager assigns the team lead says "Yes" and assigns it to the employees in spite of protests that they're overloaded. 0) How hard do you think it is to survive as a Team Lead? If you've taken on this role presently, or in the past, then what has been your personal experience after taking the jump? 1) Was it less hectic, aka, did you get a better work life balance? 2) Was it as mind-numbing as being overloaded as a senior QA? 3) How was your connection with your own boss / the manager?
Layoffs
2d
40207
Google CFO confirms 'large-scale' layoffs (Apr 17)
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1284
So hard being a women in tech industry
2024 Tax
Yesterday
2819
Biden’s new tax proposal is wild
2024 Presidential Election
Yesterday
1649
Biden ruined America and tech! Tax plans are insane
India
Yesterday
1768
Lost respect for Modiji
I can't speak specifically to QA, but I believe my situation may lend you at least a little insight. I transitioned from a senior engineer yo taking on team lead responsibility recently and I found that I was pretty much already doing the work without the title or pay. Not sure the country you're in, but in the USA at least we have a bad habit of taking our most productive and efficient employees and giving them more work to the point of burnout instead of giving them better work that shows their skill. Oftentimes this also means giving them responsibility well beyond their job description. Happened to me in an old job before my current one as well. I've always found that you end up with a few choices here. 1. Find a place where the upper management actually listens when you say you're unhappy. A good employee should be given what they need to succeed, whether thats more focused work, more complex problems, or more responsibility. Good management should listen and learn to balance pushing employees for growth with the proper workload for peak employee performance and satisfaction. 2. Keep taking it on the chin and use the leverage. Keep grinding and doing the work you're given. When raise time or promotion time comes, use that leverage to push for the goal you want. Make sure you are visible but not obnoxious about the work you do up to the point you need to use that leverage. Some workplaces this is a must. I find then to be combative and unhealthy, but its a work political game and you can win it. Others, this requires a more subtle approach and isnt so much a leverage battle as reminding them of your worth and letting them know your goals so you can mutually benefit from the relationship. 3. Change positions. You're already considering this one. In my experience, a senior or lead anything is normally more work, not less. Unless of course youre already doing those things like I was. But, it does include different work that has variety and is possibly more interesting to you, making it less stressful and more like and interesting puzzle. 4. Have a very candid conversation with your management. Sounds like youve tried this at least to some degree. Maybe need to set a one on one meeting and go into more detail on your pain points and goals. If your boss is more numbers minded, work up a little cost benefit and risk analysis of your workload vs tour productivity if things continue at an unsustainable rate. May help to have a competing job offer in your pocket for two reasons here. If it goes sideways, you have a backup. If the response is combative or dismissive, you have leverage. Might nit need to bring up the other offer at all. Your boss may be great and hear you out. Hope that helps some. I know its not a direct answer, but its what has helped me when I was in a similar position. Ive used all of these in one form or another, sometimes a combination of a few.
Also, feel free to PM or reply if you have further questions. Been a team lead for years now in software engineering. Would be glad to explain my experience more in depth if it might help.
Thank you for replying to my post! I am in an Asian country but I work for a US MNC (Oracle). You mentioned about employers pushing more and more work onto well performing employees and that has been my own experience too. In fact, throughout most of my career I've been pushed on considerably more work than the other team members own. It's a frustrating experience, no doubt. The result of the this kind of constantly-increasing-workload is that the under-performing employees enjoy a very healthy work-life balance and are usually the ones who stick with the company for the longest period of time. Thus, they are more likely to get promoted and I feel that that is how such severely incompetent people get into the management stream. I don't want to sound biased and I'm sure that there are a few good managers too. However, in Asian countries, at least in mine, there's a high percentage of horrible bosses. "..and I found that I was pretty much already doing the work without the title or pay." That sounds like just what I've been suspecting! I see the lower management layer just passing on information upwards and downwards. I've seen them taking the most minimum decisions. Any decision that the upper management needs they pass it down until it reaches the employees. The lower management discusses with them, gets some presentation made by them which he then passes on to the higher management as his work. The only thing different from all this would be the Tech Lead role but I'm not sure what that entails exactly. I haven't seen subordinates being assigned to a Tech Lead and mostly it seems to be an individual contributer role. "1. Find a place where the upper management actually listens when you say you're unhappy." Yeah, I noticed that my boss is more into numbers and I made up an excel that showed all the numbers of what work I've been assigned along with estimates for each of them. The problem with analyzing estimates is that (1) there are a lot of smaller tasks that we do which doesn't appear in the Excel sheet (because it would take a herculean effort to get a whole list of those tasks). Also, (2) there are many times when existing tasks get stretched due to blocking issues and you need to find a workaround. All that time goes unaccounted for. So I think that the trick is to inflate the numbers a little bit and add an "other tasks" section. Hopefully that makes it clearer. Luckily for me after I spoke to my management, they've decided to help me out and distribute my tasks around the team. However, I'm not sure to what extent this would work out. In the meanwhile, I continue looking outside for jobs. "2. Keep taking it on the chin and use the leverage. " I agree with all your points. Creating visibility is a key element for survival in the team. It's a slow-improving skill I guess. "3. Change positions...But, it does include different work that has variety and is possibly more interesting to you, making it less stressful and more like and interesting puzzle. This is what I've been suspecting too. The lead role might not be as difficult as the job description makes it out to be. For example "motivate employees", "solve any technical blockers", "Solve technical problems" etc sound larger than life. I've never come across a lead who actually spent time in figuring out a technical solution that would unblock the team. They mostly focus on reporting, task assignment, task distribution and tracking the progress of various tasks. "4. Have a very candid conversation with your management..." Yep. I've tried this. I'm also trying to land a job either outside my company or with another team internally. I find it much easier to try internally but when it comes to finding a job outside, it's very difficult to get the interview calls. I think that getting an interview call and landing a job might easily take 4-6 months, possibly a year. The problem is that there are too many people who're applying for the same job and it gets difficult to stand out from the crowd when you're talking of hundreds of people applying for the same position on a daily basis. I think the trick is to get referred for the interview. "How to land an interview" is a completely different topic though. Thanks a lot for replying to my post! :)