You’re the Tech lead, not the Tech guru

Or as I liked to call it during high school: I don’t need to know all the answers to the test, I only need to know the phone number of the guy who does.

People often get confused by the fact that because a technical leader is supposed to guide and lead a group of technical experts, him or her needs to be the ultimate guru on every technology related to the project they’re working on. The truth of the matter is, achieving that is simply not possible.

Don’t get me wrong, it could happen under the right circumstances: right project, right teammates, right set of requirements. But honestly, how often does that happen? Think about it, think about every technology you’re an expert on, how many are they? Two? Three? More?

Let’s be honest for a minute here, the usual tech guru is either:

• Really proficient in one technology and fairly good at many others
• Or really good at many technologies but not really great at any of them (the oh so well known “jack of all trades, master of none”).

And this happens not because I say so, or because there is some strange and unfair rule on the IT industry that prevents you from being a guru on several technologies at the same time on your career; this simply happens because of life; you’ll eventually end up having one…