Christoph Nakazawa
Hello there! I’m the CEO of Nakazawa Tech and I live in Tokyo with my wife and two daughters. I’m currently building Athena Crisis.
Originally from Austria, I’ve been creating video games and social networks since 2002. I spent the 2010s at Facebook in Menlo Park and London managing JavaScript Infrastructure and the React Native team. I built Jest, Metro, Yarn, and MooTools.
I write about Frontend Development, Engineering Management, Leadership, User Experience, and more. If you want to support this work, please consider a GitHub sponsorship.
Mastering Tech Lead Management
Most engineers are faced with the choice to switch to management at some point in their careers. Changing to Engineering Management (EM) or sticking with an Individual Contributor (IC) role feels like a black-and-white decision, and people often feel pressure to pick one or the other. Instead, there is a less well-known hybrid role at many companies: the Tech Lead Manager (TLM) role.1
Responsibilities
The responsibilities of the TLM role can be fuzzy and include a mix of people management, technical leadership, and individual contributions. Let’s take a look at common EM and IC responsibilities:
Footnotes
-
Also sometimes ambiguously referred to as “Staff Engineering Manager”. ↩