The leader in a dev team should be the BEST DEVELOPER

Not the one with "leadership" or "strong ownership" skills and "team player" or "go getter" attitudes. This is euphemism for promoting someone just because you like them, or because of their charisma.

There are many other industries where charisma can play a role in leadership but software is not one of them. To build good software we need to be objective thinkers, not influencers.

"technical" leadership ... sure ... to some extent.

I've seen some pretty awesome technical folks who were the best by far ... who were damn horrible managers.

I sat in a meeting with one who once complained that they sent an email about a process out and nobody was following it. I asked about the email because I couldn't find it / wanted to follow it. I was told "oh it was before you were here".

I had been there for 2 years ...

This is like saying that the soldier who should be the plt sgt should be the "fastest and strongest" when if he is a fucking retard he will get you killed.

It's no different to the dev world, one can be an excellent coder and yet have the communication and leadership skills of an unbaked potato

Good technical skills are a necessary but not sufficient condition for good technical leadership.

"BEST" is not a unit of measurement, as a Dev you should already know this.

What if the best developer is an asshole and has empathy problems and zero people skills? Would you like her/him as your leader?

Leadership is about people skills and not so much about thechnical skills. For that you've got very smart people hired who figure the tech out.

@AleCx04 can confirm!

Baked potato here!

@heyheni In this case it would be classified as a serious personal issue so no, they would not be a good leader.

What I am saying is that I much prefer someone with ADEQUATE personal skills, and very strong technical skills, over someone who's a fucking showoff extrovert, but writes code like a first year student.

@MrMarco A manager/team leader without programming skills is mostly a problem if they do not acknowledge it.

If they take any technical questions to the team and accept their opinion it can work very well.

@Voxera I disagree. If you are a manager without programming skills, you might be a really good manager - But you don't belong in a software company, I'm sorry.

I won't go in to the 1 million reasons I have for this, but as an example, look at the CEO of just about every software giant. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Larry & Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg. They were all developers. And not just developers, but very, very prolific and active hands-on developers.

It's not a coincidence. It just isn't

Good dev skills != Good manager skill.
Those are two different skill sets. Need to develop both.

@MrMarco but none of them was average. They where good on tech, managers and business.

And I said programming, not tech.

As long as they understand the overall picture of the problem real programming skills is in my experience not necessary, welcome yes but not necessary.

And a good people manager can get a group working better.

But sure, no tech skills at all will be a problem yes.

Last time our dev lead wrote code, he still was working in a nuclear plant.

Why is everyone taking this to the extreme?

Let me explain

Dev A: Excellent tech skills, adequate personal skills
Dev B: Excellent personal skills, adequate tech skills

Dev A should 100% be chosen as the leader. Because this is a software department, not a fucking HR department

I have seen too many people being promoted who can't code properly, and just using their big words and talking to veil their inability to understand what's going on in the tech stack

@NoDevNoMore A lead developer role is not about talking. It's about making the important technical decisions and making the final call when your team members disagree about a technical choice.

It's about monitoring code reviews, deciding on which coding principles to follow and to make sure that good developers are rewarded, using nuanced and deep technical judgement

It's about making sure technical debt is avoided or otherwise handled appropriately, and making sure that nobody is committing bad quality code.

Do you want me to keep on explaining? Is this honestly news to you?

@NoDevNoMore Yeah, as I said *adequate* personal skills is required. But the main criteria and the main requirement should be excellent technical skills.