
Ask HN: What questions to ask to evaluate a tech lead? - kartickv
I&#x27;m good at interviewing engineers, but what questions do I ask to determine how good someone is as a tech lead &#x2F; people manager? For example:<p>&quot;Tell me about a time when someone under you came to you with a problem they couldn&#x27;t solve. How did you solve it?&quot;<p>What other questions to ask, and what aspects of their work to probe?
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mstolpm
Ask him/her the exact same question: „What questions would _you_ ask to
evaluate a tech lead?“ This will tell you his/her priorities for the job.

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ChrisCinelli
I can tell you what to ask but how are you going to know if their answers are
good? =)

I would start to test coding skills. You says you are good at it and
especially for a lead, they are still part of the daily job.

Ask: How do you align a team? What are the steps you go through?

Ask: You are starting a new product, what technology do you use and why?

Ask: How do you prevent bugs? (look for what process he put in place to reduce
bugs).

Ask: How do you measure the team success?

Ask: Tell me about how you hire people.

Ask: How do you run you 1:1 with the people in your team?

If you want to know about what look in the answers... this will take longer to
explain. Happy to help if I can.

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mchannon
A law firm wouldn't ask an attorney to prove he knows law.

A medical practice wouldn't ask a physician to prove he knows medicine.

You wouldn't put a veteran over-the-road truck driver through a driving test
you set up in your parking lot.

By the time someone's senior enough to be a tech lead, they'll have a stream
of completed projects and glowing references. Amazing how many people will not
consider those but will base everything on a slipshod tech screen. Even if
third graders consider themselves qualified to teach the second grade, they're
not, because they're third graders. Same with programmers evaluating other
programmers.

Treat candidates like they're the scarce commodity they are, and avoid the
stupid questions, buy them lunch (offsite!), and you'll instantly outperform
95% of other hiring managers.

Treat them like they're fresh out of clown college and they'll rightly
recognize you as a cargo cult hiring manager. The good ones will bow out or
ghost immediately, and what that leaves you with is not what you want to hire.

Hiring top talent is hard, but it's 100x as hard when you're stupid.

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ChrisCinelli
On references and treating good candidates like they're the scarce, I agree.

On "they'll have stream of completed projects", not so much. "A high tide
lifts all boats" and at the same time it does not tell you a lot about the
candidate's responsibility in an unsuccessful product.

I met enough tech engineer "leaders" that got their job from business people
because they were good at talking even if they were pretty bad at everything
else.

Soft skills are VERY important as a people manager but they cannot come at the
expense of business acumen, good product sense, mediocre processes and
technical inadequacy.

So when something is important for the position and it is easy to test, test
it.

I agree on looking at reference for other things, harder to test.

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JamesBarney
Start off by figuring out what your tech lead's primary responsibilities would
be.

Depending on the company and position the tech lead could be responsible for
any of the below

1\. managing people

2\. managing product

3\. managing clients

4\. keeping devs focused and on a schedule, even if that means doing the
"wrong" thing

5\. ensuring devs do the "right" thing even if schedule slips

6\. being a technology expert

7\. mentoring

The first step if figuring out how you get what you want( a good tech lead) is
figure out what is you want(what a good tech lead means to the organization)

Specifically in your organization what would be the primary responsibilities
for this tech lead?

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ryanchants
How do you handle a developer you feel is falling behind?

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tboyd47
Are you comfortable delegating?

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angersock
How do you measure your team's impact to the business?

