Technical leadership and glue work
summary
Argues that doing onboarding, docs, roadmap and unblocking is real technical leadership but often goes unrewarded and can stall careers. Gives data: women volunteer this work 48% more and managers ask women 44% more. Describes concrete outcomes: onboarding docs and a mentorship program, shared coding standards that cut rollbacks and speed reviews, and a four-step plan (career conversation, title, artifacts, temporarily stop glue to ship quantifiable code). Recommends calendar-blocking, meeting notes and design proposals as proof.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (39)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:14Technical leadership
- 2:05Tanya Reilly
- 2:25Agenda
- 3:37Story Time
- 3:48First Changes
- 4:11First Win
- 5:22Mentorship
- 5:38Coding Standards
- 6:02Awesome Coder
- 6:53Unofficial Lead
- 7:39Promotion
- 8:48Glue work
- 9:15Leadership
- 10:26Glue or exhaust
- 10:58Volunteering
- 11:45NonPromotable Work
- 13:03Changing Roles
- 13:53Social Competence
- 14:26Skills
- 15:04Choosing a role
- 16:00Industry bias
- 16:51Leaving the industry
- 17:25Not technical enough
- 18:15My bias
- 19:16What to do if youre glue
- 19:43Long overdue career conversation
- 20:15Job titles
- 21:21Artifacts
- 22:14A cynical solution
- 22:49Shes rusty
- 23:37Diversity work
- 23:51Free time
- 24:13virtuous cycle
- 24:36increasing other skills
- 25:18be public about learning
- 25:45never waste an opportunity
- 26:18put effort into communication
- 26:55Olsen coder and system designer
related talks
11mLeading without committing: Managing teams outside your tech stack
24mHow To Contribute to a Project without Coding
30mTechnical Onboarding, Training, and Mentoring
30mEquipping your team to support junior developers
36mNuances of Influencing Developer Experience and Productivity Through Tech Products
52mEmpowerment in the Software Delivery Lifecycle
50mMaking the Leap to Tech Lead
34mBuilding a Culture For Developer Productivity