Interesting, I have a pretty different view on tech lead.
The things you mention (handing out tasks, interfacing with upper management, discipline,
etc...) are out and out managerial tasks from my viewpoint and if I had a
manager and a tech lead, I wouldn't take any of that from the tech lead. I
consider tech lead as senior techy, the guy whom you go to when you are out of
ideas on what to do next to solve a technical problem. The manager is you
go to for interfacing with anyone outside of the group, personnel issues and
getting your tasks. I think the manager and the tech lead need to
work very closely but that is mostly to keep the manager in a good place,
informed, and pointed in the right direction such that managerial decisions
don't adversely impact the technical aspects of the work too much as well as
letting the manager know what the technical priorities are from the tech leads
viewpoint and so the manager can tell the tech lead what the real priorities are
as they are decided by the manager. For instance if going into a meeting with a
"customer"[1] the tech lead feeds the manager with as much knowledge as
necessary so the manager isn't completely at a loss in the meeting and as things
dive into tech, if they do, the tech lead is either there (if it is known ahead
of time it will get deep) or available via phone to
help.
Tech and managerial pieces do not normally fit together
well, very different skill sets and strengths needed to do one or the other
well. Very few people, IMO, can be good at tech and good at managerial.
Unfortunately many companies do not see this and in order for someone to move up
through the ranks they must assume managerial duties when in fact the company
should have a managerial track and a technical track for the folks to follow so
they can stick with the areas in which they have the greatest strength.
Hopefully it is getting more and more obvious to companies that trying to make
people spend all of the their time trying to improve on their weaknesses
versus utilizing their strengths is a losing proposition. To put it another way,
if someone is an amazing techy and a horrible manager, you don't force them to
spend their time trying to be a mediocre manager. That is the person that
everyone will point at and say they are a sucky manager.
joe
[1] Define as you wish, different groups have different
customers. IT has the business, the business could have another aspect of the
business or external, etc.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Hargraves
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006 1:10 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] OT: Interview Techniques
Technical leads have many of the responsibilities of a manager (handing out tasks, interfacing with upper management, discipline, etc...) but also have to be able to 'get their hands dirty', in other words, they basically have to be very strong technically.
If you're interviewing for a manager who isn't going to be doing anything technical, then just make sure that A) you don't grant him schema/enterprise admin rights, so that he can't screw everything up on you and B) He knows enough to where you're not holding his hand in *every* discussion that goes down the technical path.
If he's a technical lead... he should know how to deal with people and know nearly as much as you do, if not more. If he's going to be digging into AD and having to work on fixing problems when they appear, then you need to make sure that he's not going to screw things up because he's trying to remember what they taught him in that 2-week class 8 months ago.
On 7/23/06, Matheesha
Weerasinghe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
All
I am currently in the process of interviewing job
candidates who if successful will become my boss ;-)
Basically the manager who will be his boss has asked
me to do the technical side of the interview and check
if the candidates are OK. I've had the "pleasure" of
interviewing 2 so far and they were pretty weak
technically. I am not sure if I have been spoilt by
the creme-de-la-creme here but I did check them a
little thoroughly especially with the candidate who
was bold enough to mention under key skills "very
strong knowledge of windows 2000/2003 Active
Directory".
Now I am definitely no expert, but if someone is bold
enough to claim that, he better not buckle up under
pressure and reply that the questions I am asking are
only worthy knowledge to those working at Microsoft.
And this is the reply I got when I asked him what the
FSMO roles did. Actually, I got a little miffed as the
guys had the audacity to demand pretty much twice the
pay I am getting and were paper MCSE's.
The feedback we received from the candidates
afterwards said the interview style was .....
aggressive.
So, my question to you guys is, if you interviewing
someone for a Windows tech-lead position (with focus
on AD), how technical would you want him to be? This
is a guy who would be steering the design of an
infrastructure to support tens of thousands of users.
Cheers
Mudha
{Newbie AD Guru wannabe ;0) }
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