Technical Coach: My Job Doesn’t Exist
Search for “tech coach” on LinkedIn, and you’ll quickly see that the listings aren’t exactly plentiful. Or, more precisely, since this search still returns over 40 pages of results, let’s just say that none of them really match what we’re looking for: there’s a plethora of Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, and tech leads, but technical coaches—period!
Does that mean my job doesn’t exist? That would be unfortunate. I can just imagine explaining to my clients that they’re paying for a service that doesn’t exist…
Joking aside, when you’re sick, you go see a doctor. When the organization isn’t functioning properly and you can’t develop the right features quickly, you call in an organizational doctor—that is, an agile coach—a term that’s become highly controversial, but that’s another story.
But when you can no longer move the codebase forward, what do you do? When you’re faced with that, for example.
We’d probably be well advised to call in a doctor here too—a code doctor. That is, a technical coach. Their involvement is a long-term process; we’ll have the opportunity to come back to this later.
That’s what sparked the idea for this newsletter. Too many CTOs and VPs of Engineering are left to face mounting technical debt and declining velocity on their own, while user dissatisfaction grows alongside that of the developers 😭.
This newsletter is every Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.—a few lines aimed at raising awareness about the technical coaching profession. The connection to agility, the differences between coaching and training, and everything you’ve always wanted to know but were afraid to ask: what does it involve, how does it work, how long does it take, is it really worth it? And ultimately, does quality come at a high cost?
And it’s right here.
See you next week!