At Picnic, we pride ourselves on developing things in-house whenever we can. Typically we are referring to software when we say this, but our engineering talent is no exception! In this post you will learn how we are growing the next generation of tech leadership at Picnic.
We are doing this through the Tech Academy, our learning and development program and platform focused on giving valuable and relevant trainings on technical and adjacent topics. Within the Tech Academy, some courses are given by external trainers, while others are developed and given by our own engineers. We have courses on topics ranging from specific technologies like MongoDB, React and Git, to more tech-agnostic skills and activities like incident management and improving observability. Aside from individual courses, we also have what we call a learning path — a set of courses that you follow with the same group, spanning several months. At the beginning of this year we only had one: the Junior Java learning path. But then came the idea of the Tech Lead learning path.
Becoming a lead is hard!
As I already mentioned, we like to develop in-house where we can. While of course we hire leadership from outside Picnic who can bring a fresh perspective, we also have within our ranks many incredibly smart and driven developers who have the ambition and skills to lead. Putting those people into leadership positions both helps them grow, and gives us leaders who are already intimately familiar with how Picnic operates.
At the same time, we acknowledge that moving from an individual contributor role into a leadership role can be challenging! I experienced this first-hand when I became a tech lead over 3 years ago. Sure, I was a competent engineer and had experience leading bigger projects. But I had never had direct reports before whose growth I was responsible for. I had never needed to think about how to organize a team full of engineers who, sometimes, knew much more than me. And I had never had to build my own vision of what a team could achieve over the span of multiple years!
In my first year as a tech lead, I was supported by my own lead, my mentor, and the product owner of the team, whom I worked closely with. I made many mistakes, and within Picnic I thankfully had the room and grace to grow at my own pace. However, the smoother we can make this transition, the happier and more successful our future leadership will be. By offering a structured learning path with clear objectives, a defined timeframe and dedicated support, we can ensure our next tech leads start their journeys on a solid foundation, where they can grow more sustainably than IÂ did.
Our philosophy
So, how do we provide this structured learning? In the Picnic Tech Academy, we believe that the best learning happens through a mix of theory and practice. Without theory, you get engineers who know what to do but not why, who may struggle to extrapolate and adapt what they do to new contexts. On the other hand, without practice, you get engineers who can explain the why to others, but struggle to consistently apply what they know. We want the best of both at Picnic!
Speaking of the best: for the content itself we wanted to combine industry best practices with what we know works well at Picnic. In particular we wanted to make sure it was adjusted to how we arrange leadership roles at Picnic. In many large tech companies, the roles of technical lead and engineering manager are separate. At Picnic, we combine it into the Tech Lead role (sometimes called tech lead manager in other companies). The Picnic Tech Lead is responsible for the technical vision of their team’s products, the successful delivery of high quality software, but also the growth and coaching of their team members.
So, to ensure we give our students the best chance at success within Picnic, we make sure to adapt core theory from reputable sources, but adapt it to the Picnic context where relevant, for example by showing how they can use the tools we use to apply the theory. We also involved current tech leads in the content creation and teaching, who could then “pass on the torch” and give their perspective and share their experience. That way they have the right tools to be great tech leads at Picnic, while also learning from the best practices within our industry.
Throughout the learning path, we wanted to make sure we avoid overwhelming the students with too much information, which could either cause anxiety or them simply forgetting what they learn by the time they need to apply it. So we focused not on teaching them every single detail about how to be a tech lead, but instead on giving a solid foundation which would be especially helpful in the first 6–12 months of the role. Upon this foundation they could then build the more advanced skills on the job with the help of their lead when the time comes.
The Tech Lead Learning Path
The foundation we wanted to build consisted of both soft and hard skills. Since a tech lead at Picnic needs to be able to run an effective team, deliver high quality software and grow excellent engineers, we wanted to make sure we covered the important bases.The Tech Lead learning path consists of four in-house built courses:
Work planning: How to plan and execute successful projects, how the roadmapping process at Picnic works, and how to work with business stakeholders towards common goals.
Improving Quality and Resilience: How to architect for resilience and maintenance, how to do effective testing and QA planning, how metrics and SLOs can steer development, and how to work with incidents and on-call support as a Tech Lead.
Building Effective Dev Teams: How to establish good team processes and rituals, how to collaborate effectively, and how to measure, experiment with and incorporate new ways of working.
Technical Decision Making: How to embrace the technical decision making process and guide your team to involve the right stakeholders at the right time, foster a documentation culture and push for feedback.
Within each course, we made sure to include practical exercises as well as homework so the participants could apply what they were learning right away. However, we were faced with one problem: The engineers following this path are not tech leads yet. Following the learning path also does not mean that they immediately become tech leads after completing it, since that depends on the available vacancies and whether each engineer feels ready to take the next step in their career. This meant that they would not be able to immediately apply everything they learn right away.
To solve this problem, we kept in mind that leadership is not just a specific role — it’s a set of behaviors that can always be exhibited, albeit with a different scope. So, for each course, we provided our students with guidance on how they could still apply the skills within their current role, for example when leading projects. They were also assigned a mentor who works closely with them day-to-day, who could support them with their continued learning.
In addition to the day-to-day mentorship, the tech leads and other experts who helped us develop and teach the materials were also able to provide guidance on how to adapt the theory to the Picnic context. As an example, across the trainings Work Planning and Building Effective Dev Teams, we shared how our project management tool of choice could be used most effectively to plan projects, track progress and automate away manual processes.
Furthermore, with the help from these experienced tech leads, during the sessions the students always had someone present who could share personal experiences of what worked for them and what didn’t, and answer the questions the participants had about the role. Through sharing real mistakes and learnings, we show our aspiring tech leads that they don’t have to do everything perfectly right away.
Now, every good software designer knows that building in-house is not always the best solution. Sometimes relying on existing work done by subject matters experts is the smartest design choice. This was the case for the more people-oriented soft skills we wanted our future leads to build. We combined our in-house courses with three additional courses from an external learning partner:
Empathy and Trust: How to empathize with and build trust with others.
Feedback for Growth: How to give ongoing positive and constructive feedback.
Persuading with Value Profiles: How to understand your own values and others’, and how to adapt communication based on these.
Through these seven courses, we deliver a comprehensive learning path that provides our students with a solid foundation on which to build their skills.
The results
In the first half of this year, we built and ran the first edition of the Tech Lead learning path with a group of 8 engineers who all have started considering leadership as their next potential career move. While I have my own thoughts on how it went, I think it will be even more effective to hear from the participants themselves! I talked with Lia, Saul and Florencia and asked them about their experience with this program.
Why did you attend the Tech Lead learning path?
Lia: After many years working as an engineer (a role I still love), I began to feel it was the right time to explore what leadership could mean for me. More and more, I’ve found myself wanting to support my teammates, not just through technical work, but by looking out for them and helping the team thrive. The Tech Lead learning path felt like a structured way to take a step in that direction, without having to fully leave engineering behind just yet, and it gave me the chance to connect with others asking themselves the same questions.
Saul: I have been very interested in team dynamics since early on in my career; getting to know colleagues to better navigate our collaborations. I feel it is more rewarding when we reach a goal while showing interest and care for each other’s development so that we grow as our accomplishments do.
Florencia: Even though I wasn’t officially performing the Tech Lead role, due to different circumstances I found myself taking some responsibilities that would be aligned with a Tech Lead role. These responsibilities included coaching colleagues, improving developer processes, advocating for team members growth, and contributing to the product vision. While I enjoyed some of these tasks, I struggled with others, particularly when trying to generate team engagement and communicate our technical vision to business stakeholders. I decided to seek formal guidance to improve these skills.
What is the biggest learning you take away from the process?
Florencia: The most significant learning came from the Building Effective Dev Teams course and understanding what a team needs to be successful. I was able to directly map my team’s struggles to the failure to meet the most important needs. The course and the shared experiences from other colleagues provided valuable insights. I’ve already begun applying this learning. I’m now focusing on providing more structure and clarity for my team. We are using the tools from the course to better delegate and prioritize our work, which helps us manage our main constraint: time.
Saul: Effective communication can take so many different shapes depending on the context and the help of frameworks is so valuable to set a baseline to build on top. I have already managed to apply it in my own team when sharing feedback and discussing some foundational topics to form our team identity as we are a relatively new team, and for this, knowing how to reach each team member’s core values is really important.
Lia: Hearing and discussing how different teams approach leadership in their own ways was very insightful. Processes and ways of working don’t have to be identical across teams, even though we have patterns and guidelines to follow. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for leading a team, because teams are made of people, and each person works and communicates in their own way. It’s about finding the right approaches and processes for the team while keeping focus on our shared goals.
Who would you recommend to follow this path?
Saul: I would recommend it to anyone looking to boost their understanding of the Tech Lead role, to either become one or work more effectively with them and the team. I think it gives us a great deal of tools and approaches to reflect and act on improvements for the team, which is usually linked only to the Tech Lead but really anyone within the team with the drive to do it can do so.
Florencia: I would recommend two courses from the path to any senior engineer: Work Planning and Quality and Resilience. These courses are highly valuable because senior engineers are frequently tasked with creating work plans and ensuring the quality of their designs. The learning path provides a structured approach for these tasks, offering insights into Picnic’s specific way of working.
Lia: I would recommend this learning path to anyone curious about what tech leadership could mean for them. It’s an opportunity to explore the role of a Tech Lead and reflect on the best ways to approach it when stepping into the role. The course also provides a chance to revisit concepts you’re already familiar with from a different, higher-level perspective, strengthening understanding while providing space for reflection and growth.
Taking the leap forward
Growing the next generation of leadership can definitely happen through simply promoting promising engineers and giving them on-the-job coaching and training. Through the Tech Lead learning path we support them even better on this journey. But it’s not just the skills themselves that people may need help with. Many engineers struggle with the ambiguity of what it means to move into a leadership position. How will my day-to-day life change? Will I be able to do it? Am I even ready for it? By giving them this structured learning path where they get to understand more about the role and see how they can already start developing the skills required for it, we are giving them a much higher chance of success, and hopefully converting that anxiety into excitement! Leadership can be an incredibly rewarding part of your career, and at Picnic we want it to be something people do not because they feel it’s the only way to grow in their career, but because they’re excited about what they can achieve through leadership!
If this post got you excited about Picnic, I encourage you to check out our careers page! Whether you are curious about leadership, already got your taste of it and would like to continue on your path, or you know that it’s not the right choice for you, we’ve got a role for you!
Growing the next generation of leadership was originally published in Picnic Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
