What are your expectations from a lead developer?
I am a senior SE (7yoe), doing backend almost exclusively nowadays.
I've been with my current company for ~10 months now and quite enjoying it - it's a bit hectic with tight deadlines and a lot of legacy, but there are a lot of fun challenges and the company's product (dating site which tries to be wholesome, as contradictory as it sounds) is a lot of fun.
The work is organized in several streams (we currently have 3). Every stream is doing one or two major features at a time, and has a mix of FE and BE engineers and couple of QAs, totalling at about 7-10 people and changing shapes depending on what feature we are doing. No sprints, thankfully (but deadlines are quite tight).
Each of these streams has a "lead". I wouldn't call this position a "team lead" (although it might be?); lead's function is to coordinate work, answer "streammate's" questions, and generally try to maintain momentum. For most of organizational and "business-y" stuff we have a PM who is cross-team.
Recently I was offered a "trial run" of one of the streams and agreed; doing this for 2 months now. It's quite fun - I love helping people and the feeling of responsibility, having a (moderate) say at the decisions made regarding the feature we create, trying to keep momentum while not micromanaging, and communicating with PM and business to try and make my streammates' lives easier.
This is my first time doing this and I wonder - what does this role look like to you guys (and gals)? Is it a team lead, lead SE, or something else entirely? What do you expect of someone in this position? Do you have any advice on what mistakes to avoid?
Cheers!