Okay, Congratulations.
(Part of me thought of stopping the post right there for laughs)
This statement invariably comes up from someone who is knee deep in their speciality and has started comparing themselves to the person they report to – their Team Lead, their Manager, their Director, etc, etc. Wherein they start to think that they would be much better as the lead because they know their speciality so much better.
This could be true and if you are one to be thinking this, I might respond back with the following questions;
- Is this all you are focused on?
- Are you responsible for only your efforts alone?
- Are you helping the rest of your team grow through your efforts?
- Do you ensure that everyone is not bottlenecked on outside influences that could derail your projects?
- Are you involved in not only your area of expertise but the rest of the team’s?
- Are you actively coding while taking the time to help people with their own coding problems?
Team Leads are a special breed of leader in Software Development – they don’t typically have any direct control over pay, vacation, objectives of people in their team and yet they still have a ton to do in that regard. In essence, all they have is their skills as a leader to encourage, motivate, lead their team to deliver something, anything of incredible awesomeness.
So yes, you might be smarter than your Team Lead in your area of expertise, but that’s probably because your Team Lead has shifted their focus to the entire team and is trying to think of a way that they can make everyone on the team smarter than they are.
