Becoming a Tech Lead workshop
How software engineers can grow into leaders through their daily work
June 29th, 2021, 5:30-8 PM PST
Hosted by Yulia Eskin
About Becoming a Tech Lead Workshop
This workshop is for you if you’re a junior or a senior engineer interested in becoming a tech lead. Any level of experience is welcome!
Most software engineers become tech leads unintentionally. Usually, the role is not well defined nor are the full set of duties and leadership skills needed for success. Most importantly, engineers often don’t recognize their own leadership skills nor how to translate them to their daily work so that they get their first TL role.
In this workshop, we’ll define clearly what’s expected of a Tech Lead in terms of work duties and leadership skills. We will explore in depth how even the most junior engineers can lead right away and find their own leadership style.
What does a Tech Lead really do and which leadership skills are relevant?
We’re going to define what a tech lead actually does in the day to day and which leadership skills are most important.
We’ll explore how the role differs between startups and corporations.
As an engineer, what’s the path to tech leadership?
Where do you start? How do you get recognized as a leader?
We’ll outline the set of daily behaviors you want to start doing on day 1 on the job.
It doesn’t matter how experienced you are. These leadership behaviors will get you noticed so you can become a tech lead when the opportunity arises.
As an immigrant, how does your culture impact your leadership?
Cultures have different values and belief systems. Not all cultures value or define leadership it in the same way.
We will explore how cultural background affects leadership and how you can define your own style.
Featured
Speakers
We have assembled a panel of Silicon Valley leaders who will share their insights on becoming a tech lead.
Yulia Eskin
Career and Leadership Development Coach; Tech Lead with a decade of experience in Silicon Valley and research
Mark Pariente
Staff Engineer and Tech Lead at Google and VMWare
Sara Rahimian
Director of Engineering
Yulia was a tech lead on my team and led a very complex / challenging project with some aggressive deadlines. In addition we had a team that was spread out in several different time zones. I could always count on her to be thorough, detail oriented and navigate all aspects of the project. She had this innate ability to put together all the moving pieces and communicate the risks effectively. This made her an effective lead. What made her an outstanding leader is her deep interest and effectiveness in ensuring that every member of the team is successful! I love that she has been able to apply some of these leadership skills to transition / pursue her dream of being a coach. She will be a huge asset and successful in any field she chooses
During Yulia’s 2.5+ years at Practice Fusion, she excelled equally as an engineer as she did as a leader. She approached every problem presented her team with a cheerful determination that was contagious to every engineer around her. Yulia does not simply take business requirements and convert them into product. She is deeply interested in the reasoning behind the business problem so her team properly solves it, rather than just achieving requirements. This trait was immensely valuable to PF and will be to any other team she works on. I would love to work with Yulia again and would hire her in an instant, either in healthcare technology or otherwise
A little about me
Career and Leadership Coach, Tech lead
I’m Yulia Eskin.
It’s important that you know that I’m a 3-time immigrant (Belarus, Israel, Canada and USA) because it’s the largest part of my identity and has helped me see that everything in life, similarly to computer science, is a system. Maybe my love for math and CS started with me being an immigrant.
After completing my MSc. in computer vision and AI and working in research, I found myself wanting to better the world by moving to San Francisco and working in the health-tech startup scene. That’s where I grew from a very junior engineer to a senior engineer, tech lead and team lead.
In 2020, I quit my job and now I’m a career and leadership development coach for engineers in tech.
I love helping engineers discover their confidence and talking all things tech, product and immigrants.
More than anything, I get inspired hearing other people’s life & career stories and how they chased their dreams. I’m driven, ambitious, intellectual, thoughtful and love teaching and mentoring.
My mission is to use my technical expertise & my unique point of view as an immigrant to impact others like me to recognize their strengths and go after their big dreams.