The Code-Free Week That Changed Everything

Kevin interviews Nicole and Brittany on their podcast about the realities of stepping up to tech lead.

The Code-Free Week That Changed Everything

True or false?

Nicole still writes code all day at CloudScale.

• True
• False

Brittany tried to review every single pull request initially.

• True
• False

Nicole's best week involved writing zero lines of code.

• True
• False

Brittany loved being a player-coach right from the start without any stress.

• True
• False

Nicole realised that servant leadership changes how your impact is measured.

• True
• False

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Kevin: Welcome back to Tech Lead Insights, broadcasting live from Austin. Today we're diving into the ____ of moving from a senior developer to a management role. Nicole, you've been leading the backend team at CloudScale for six months now. How's it going?
• Nicole: Hi Kevin. Well, I've had to ____ lately, and I won't lie, I miss writing code all day. I've completely lost touch with the code in our main repository, which terrified me at first. I kept trying to fix things myself instead of letting go.
• Brittany: That's classic ____ behaviour, Nicole. When you're used to being a player-coach, you want to hold back the panic by diving back into IDEs. But your span of control has to expand beyond your own keyboard.

Sources: photo by George Milton on Pexels