Hi, yes, it's working. I've spoken at conferences before, but this is something else. This is
a little humbling. And, today, I'm actually feeling extra nervous. I'm not talking about
technology, I don't have slides with codes, or tables, or data, or graphs.
Today I'm telling a story. It's my story, and I'm not sharing it because I think it is special,
I'm sharing it because I know it is not, and it would have really helped me to hear about
this story before I got started as a lead developer. I hope by telling this story, I
can help some of you. So, two years ago, in the spring of 2016, I had to look for a new
job. I had been a front-end developer for 16 years, and, through a series of fortunate
circumstances, one of my old employers found out that I was back on the market, and invited
me over for coffee. When they did, they offered me a position of Chapter Lead - front-end
chapter lead - where I would be leading a team of different - a group of 15 different
front-end developers distributed over different teams. And the reason I'm here talking about
it is because the experience of turning into a lead developer was not great for me. I almost
gave up several times, in fact,. So I'm here to explain about how I felt being a lead developer
compared to being a developer. So, before I explain how I felt as a lead developer,
I want to explain how I felt as a developer. And the thing is about developer and being
a developer is that I love being a developer. I love programming. I love everything about
it. I love the way code looks in an editor. I love solving abstract puzzles with code.
I love building stuff out of nothing. I love having to occasionally dabble in psychology,
or mathematics, or digging up some 50-year-old algorithm I last heard about in university.
I love everything about programming, and, of course, there is more to development and
being a developer than that, but, in general, the job was not just satisfying to me, it
was really rewarding. It was fulfilling. And, the things I did, it was visible, it was almost
tangible. I could open up a browser and show my work to my friend, and my peers and family
and say, "I built that, and I was proud of that". It gave me a sense of accomplishment.
I worked really hard to get good and to stay good. I felt the things I did added value,
it added value to the products that I was working on, it added value to the companies
I was working for, and it added value to the lives of thousands, sometimes millions of
users, that used the products that I worked on. But the older and more experienced I got,
the more I got this nagging thought in the back of my head, this voice that told me,
"How long can you keep doing this? You've been doing this for 15 years. How long do
you think you can stay relevant? How long can you stay on top of the game?" Front-end
movement was moving at a break-neck indeed. It was like nothing I've ever seen before.
I'm a little ashamed to say that I had trouble keeping up. I will had real trouble keeping
up. There were people much younger and less experienced than I was that were creating
solutions I didn't understand to problems I didn't realise I was having. I couldn't
help but think, "Is this it? Is it time to move on? Am I getting too old for this?" And
it was during a period of particular self- doubt that this old employer came up to me
and invited me over for a coffee and offered me the position of chapter lead. So, naturally,
I took the offer. I thought this is my way out. This is the next step in my career, and
it was a huge step in my career, if you can call having the same job for mean years a
career. So they gave me this offer for chapter lead, and I had no idea what I was signing
up for. I really didn't. That's not entirely true. I had some ideas of what I was signing
up for, but none of them turned out to be true. And the thing is that I was completely
unprepared for the reality of being a lead developer. And the reality was rather disappointing.
It wasn't nearly as fulfilling, nearly as rewarding as I found being a programmer. At
the end of the day, I would go home, and I would think about my day, and I would think,
"What have I done today? What did I create? What did I build? What value did I add?" It
didn't create anything any more - at least nothing that added value. Most days, I would
write more emails than lines of code. I would sit in meeting after meeting about things
that had nothing to do with programming. And, when I tried to get stuff done, I would get
interrupted all the time. The interruptions were so bad that my interruptions would get
interrupted. [Laughter]. At night, at home, I would discuss with my wife, who's a doctor,
and she had these amazing stories of really helping people, making a difference in their
lives. I mean, I took pride in my work. I write some damned fine emails! [Laughter].
But no email compares to that, right? So I tried to get better. I read books. I watched
videos. And I went to conferences. I went to the Lead Dev conference here in London
last year. It was a turning point for me. I don't know if you were here last year, but
it was amazing - easily the best conference I've ever been to. And the speakers were so
inspiring, and they gave me all these ideas on how to get better as a lead developer,
and it was a real great experience for me to see
these speakers talking so passionately about being a leader, and they gave me the idea
that, yes, you can be passionate about this. But the best thing I took home from the conference
wasn't something I learned in a talk, it was something I learned by talking to the other
people in the audience during the breaks. Because I did something I should have done
way before: I did something that I should have done way earlier: talk to other lead
developers about how they were feeling about this transition. And it turned out that almost
everyone I talked to was dealing with the same issues. They were also not seeing the
real value of what therapy doing; they were also missing the satisfaction and the fulfilment
they got out of programming. And talking to them, and knowing that they also had these
problems made me feel a little bit less alone, and made me feel a little bit better about
myself. And that's one of the main reasons I'm standing up here, because I understand
not everybody talks to random strangers at a conference. So I thought if I would stand
up here and tell you, "Yes, you're not alone, you're not weird, it's totally fine, you can
feel like this, get over it, and maybe you'll be presenting at this conference next year."
So I came home from that conference not only determined to get better at being a lead developer,
but also determined to get better at enjoying it. And it totally worked. It totally worked.
I'm really happy to say, otherwise I wouldn't be here, I guess. I'm really happy to say
that it totally worked. I found something that made me re-evaluate. There's no four-step
programme that will help you do the same, but I hope that, by telling you about my story,
and that you can take the things that apply to you, and use the rest to fill in the blanks.
And the first thing I had to do was completely let go of programming. I don't mean the activity
itself, I was still programming every now and then, but it would never give me the same
satisfaction because I had so many other things to do. So I had to let if of that feeling
that I wanted to get out of programming, and I had to find something else to replace it,
because chasing that feeling actually prevented me from enjoying what I was doing. It prevented
me from seeing the value in the work that I was doing. And then something interesting
happened: my manager sent me an email and he asked me to look at the group of people
that I was managing, and to evaluate if their job title was matching their performance,
where all the job titles and responsibilities were standardised, that needed to be to be
rolled out across the company, and I needed to report to the - I needed to look at the
people who reported to me. I did so. I found two people in their group performed way better
than their job title suggested. I felt they deserved more. They deserved better. So I
focused all my email-writing powers into this email I wrote to my manager, and I argued
for their promotion, and, two months later, they were promoted. They got a significant
raise. It absolutely blew my mind, because I suddenly realised that, as a lead developer,
I've been given a rather substantial amount of influence and power in this organisation,
and I never really bothered to use it. I never really bothered to use it for good, and I
realised I could use this power for good. I could use it to improve the lives of the
people that I was working with, make their jobs and their lives a little bit better.
And this made me re-evaluate everything that I did: meetings, interruptions, emails - everything.
If I attended a meeting, that usually meant that several developers did not have to attend.
And they could continue uninterrupted on the work that they were doing. That's one way
I can help the people. If I sent out an email, it was usually for the benefit of fit of the
peel around me to make sure they had the information they needed, this they were collaborating
with the right people, or support them in another way. I learned to love interruptions,
because there's absolutely no better way to know for sure that you're going to help someone
than if they interrupt you to ask for your help. That really changed everything around
for me. It really changed my perspective on everything that I did. If you're like me,
or if you're like any of the people that I talked to last year at this conference, and
you're having trouble transitioning from your pure programming role to a lead developer
role, or you're about to, and you're going to maybe run into these issues, I just want
you to know, you're not alone. There is hope. You can totally overcome this. I hope I gave
you some ideas on how to address it, and you know, I like helping people, but it's not
because I'm sort of amazing selfless person, I like helping people because it makes me
feel important, and it makes me feel valuable. If you have power, and, if you have influence
in your organisation, just think about the ways that you can use that power that make
you feel important and valuable. I hope I didn't embarrass myself too much by talking
about all of this in front of you, and I sure hope that nobody will ever look this up on
YouTube! [Laughter]. But if I helped just one of you enjoy your day a little bit more
and gain some appreciation for the work that you're doing, then it will have been worth
it for me. And I really look forward to seeing you speak next year. Thank you. [Applause].