ShowStoppers Inc.(2) The lead

Just below the mighty manager are the most opportunistic bunch of the IT industry whom we call the leads. For the uninitiated, leads are more experienced lot of the herd who acts as a bridge between the manager and the actual worker. I am saying actual worker because, just like the manager, I would not like to keep him in the catergory who deliver the goods. You see, the leads enjoy the most advantageous point in the whole team. The juniors dont know what's going at the management level of the project, the manager doesn't know what the picture at the ground level is. These equations put him in such a position that not doing what he is supposed to do becomes very much excusable. He gets more into "co-ordinating" the work rather than doing it. Considered the most knowledgable of the lot, they have a considerable say on the way the work is done. And just that. They are hardly into actually executing the task.

The workflow is like this: The lead picks up the task to do, which anyway he has to, delegates the task to the subordinates. Again there are two kinds of subordinates, those who are relatively new and those who are relatively old. There is a tendency of the new ones to do work and prove themselves while the older ones just dont want to work as long as can. Given this, the new work generally lands up with the fresh ones. As expected, the fresher guy comes up with loads of doubts and issues regarding the work given and approaches the lead. The lead, well ensconced in his armchair, gives verbal directions on "how to solve the problem" and dismisses him immdiately. It turns out, the verbal instruction is as unyielding as the lead. The fresher guy proudly approaches the lead with the breaking news that the fix didnt work only to be promply sent back with "another possible solution". This goes back and forth until the fresher guy becomes knowledgeable enough to realize that there is no use of approaching the lead.

When it comes to communicating to the client about the work (in IT parlance, we call it delivery), leads are the contact points. Which means, from the client point of view, he is the one doing the work whereas he is doing nothing but allocating the task, making sure the developers work, collecting the work and delivering it to the manager who then sends it to the client. So the flow is basically dev>lead>manager>client. Wonder what happens when there is an issue with the work done. It follows just the opposite pattern: client>manager>lead>dev. And you know who is the scapegoat.

In short, the lead enjoys considerable power over how the work is done while at the same time the responsibility of a bad work doesn't weigh on him.