As a tech lead, I made myself redundant?
I have been assigned as tech lead for a new system in charge of solving a pretty new and complicated problem. I have spent the past two months coming up with the right architecture and some rough prototype to show around. I obtained buy-in and significant praise from executives on the way I’m going to solve the problem. I also came up with proper task allocation for 5 team members for the duration of the whole project. The problem is, now that people know what to do I made myself fully redundant and I am effectively forced to abandon this project I care a lot about, because I don’t have anything to contribute to it anymore. In fact, the manager is sort of pushing me out passive aggressively by directly interacting with the other developers without inviting me in meetings, even if I did an amazing job (again, the VP and several directors complimented the proposed approach). I get the feeling that the manager was pissed that I got all the visibility and the good ideas, since I didn’t let him “shine” in front of the executives (to be fair, he was horrible, I had to push back on all his naive proposals since they would have been debatable choices). So now that he has a plan he’s looking to execute it without my help. Did I make a mistake?
That’s not how it works. A lead doesn’t just come up with a plan and throw it over the wall. You’re supposed to stay part of the team steering it and contributing to difficult issues.
How exactly was the manager feeding here? Seems like the manager just had shit ideas and was salty OP and execs didn’t give him a participation medal. Manager needs to be fired imo.
Yeah, it can feel stupid, but never outshine the boss. Shit like this happens. Next time, “guide” him to a few discoveries himself and co-present some things. That’ll make it easier for him to let you stay as the lead, without feeling threatened. Upwards management is a whole thing, much more important to your career than many realize.
But he’s not my boss. I basically got pulled in because this team couldn’t deliver at all, and upper management thought I could steer the ship towards proper execution, which I was in the process of but now this guy is cutting me off.
c0cksucking all the way up. what a perfect meritocracy
Gracefully bow out
And do what?
More of the same, just without forgetting to loop your mgr in. This is a good path to more high-exposure tasks.
If they won't let you drive the project, no matter how well you planned, there will be surprises during execution and lead is required to make necessary changes to accommodate unexpected things. Wish them luck as it will fail unless it's really simple project or someone else does the lead job instead of you.
you gonna add some obstacles in there that noone else can foresee but you. smart I like it.
You have only just started the work, there is zero chance you designed the system 100% correct and that it won't need changes, there is zero chance you broke the tasks down correctly to account for other people's knowledge and skill level and other priorities, there is zero chance no code needs to be reviewed, there is zero chance you correctly estimated the time correctly for a new system to be built and five people work on it (it's hard enough for developers to estimate their own work let alone the work of five others). There is zero chance that no one will take vacations or get sick and throw of the schedule. There is zero chance that all five devs fully understand the system and understand if from a high level so that they can make the right decisions if anything comes up.
there may be ~0% chance op got everything 100% correct but its not implausible that they got the majority of it mostly successfully, and that is worth a lot more than they seems to be given credit for.
That may be true, but the manager still believes the plan is set in stone and he took over the execution directly with each team member, leaving me out. As I was saying, I don’t report to him since I was called in to fix the emergency situation. At some point next week I’m going to bring the matter to our skip, telling him that I’ve done a decent job so far (he is aware of the architecture) and that now the manager is basically driving the project seemingly without my help, so I’m free to work on something new.
You’re looking at this wrong. You’ve set up the team to proceed on their own. Start leading another project and only stay partly involved with this project. Follow any docs they right up, ask to be involved in some review meetings once every few weeks, attend any sprint demos and have occasional 1:1s with the engineers on the project to see if you can help, find out project details and make suggestions that will help them grow. Let the manager know that you think they’re capable of handling the day to days but would still like to be involved occasionally to help guide the engineers. Discuss this with your skip too (preferably first).
It sounds like you were summoned as a consultant to help outlining the infrastructure and the plan forward. Based on that, your deliverable would have been exactly what you’ve presented. The tricky part of consulting is identifying and engaging the stakeholders early on. Sounds like you missed one of the most important stakeholders - the guy accountable for all the dev’s work. This manager should have been involved in all of your work from the get go. Rule of thumb - if you’re going to use someone’s bandwidth, get their manager’s buy-in. Good luck in your future projects!
Time to move on. You deserve better
Now is when you set up some weekly recurring meeting so you all can give status updates and waste time discussing irrelevant information.
You got visibility so move on to next big thing. Make sure never let out all the pigeons so quick next time
thats an awesome quote (birds), can you elaborate on it?
Let out all the pigeons..?? WTF did I just read