First month as tech lead, I worked 60-hour weeks. Reviewed every PR personally. Stayed late so people would see my commitment. Answered Slack messages at midnight.
I thought I was proving I deserved the role. I was actually burning out and blocking my team.
When you first get promoted, there's this voice saying you need to justify the decision.
The voice says "be the best engineer" — you should actually enable the team.
The voice says "know everything" — you should say "I don't know, let's find out."
The voice says "always available" — you should protect your focus time.
The voice says "make every decision" — you should delegate real ownership.
The voice says "outwork everyone" — you should work sustainably.
You try to prove yourself by working the longest hours, being the most knowledgeable on every topic, responding to every message immediately, making every decision yourself, writing the most code while also leading.
It's unsustainable. And worse—it actually makes you a bad lead.
When you do everything yourself, you become the bottleneck. You're working 60 hours while your team is blocked waiting for your review. The cycle feeds itself: you review all PRs, team waits, you work more, team waits more. The result? Team doesn't grow, you burn out.
When you do everything yourself, your team doesn't grow. They wait for your review, your decision, your approval. You become the bottleneck.
When you're always available, you never have deep focus time. Your code quality drops. Your decisions get worse because you're exhausted.
When you try to be the smartest person on every topic, you stop learning from your team. And they stop sharing ideas because "the lead will just override anyway."
Delegate real ownership. Not tasks—outcomes.
Bad delegation:
"Can you write a PR for this authentication fix?"
Good delegation:
"You own the authentication refactor.
Here's the problem, here's the timeline.
Make the technical decisions.
Come to me if you're stuck."
Let people make decisions. They'll sometimes make different choices than you would. That's fine. Different isn't wrong.
Your instinct: "I would have used Strategy pattern here"
What to say: "Walk me through your approach"
What to think: "Does it work? Is it maintainable? Then it's fine."
Protect your focus time. You can't do good work if you're always interruptible.
Calendar blocking:
Mon-Fri 9-11am: Deep work (Slack off, no meetings)
Mon-Fri 2-4pm: Available for team (reviews, questions)
Result: You get focused work done AND team has access
Accept imperfect. That PR doesn't need to be perfect. Ship it, learn from production, iterate.
You got the role. You already proved something. Now the job is making the team successful—not proving you're the best individual contributor.
IC mindset: My output matters. I solve problems. I write the code. I need to know.
Lead mindset: Team's output matters. I enable problem-solving. I unblock the code writers. I connect people who know.
A good lead makes everyone around them more effective. Your leverage is the team, not your personal output.
I learned this the hard way, around month three, when I was exhausted, behind on everything, and my team was frustrated waiting for my reviews.
Now I optimize for: how much can I enable my team to do without me? The less they need me for day-to-day decisions, the better I'm doing my job.
Unhealthy: Every decision goes through you. You're the PR bottleneck. Always firefighting. Team asks permission. You're indispensable.
Healthy: Team makes decisions autonomously. PRs merge without your review. Time for strategic thinking. Team informs you after deciding. Team functions when you're on PTO.
The best tech leads I've worked with weren't the smartest engineers in the room. They were the ones who made everyone else smarter.
That's the job. Not proving you deserve it—making your team succeed.
The best leads aren't the smartest in the room. They make the room smarter.
— blanho
That abstraction layer you're building? You don't need it yet.
5 years of experience, 200 applications, 3 callbacks. Something is very wrong.
Stop chasing job titles. Start chasing knowledge. The title doesn't make you competent.