After training and coaching more than 400 tech leads across different companies, industries, and levels of experience, one pattern keeps repeating: when tech leads struggle, it’s rarely a technical gap. In this talk, Anemari Fiser shares the most common challenges tech leads bring into coaching sessions and why “getting better technically” almost never fixes them. Instead, the real blockers show up as overload, unclear expectations, ownership confusion, and assumed alignment. These patterns consistently lead to slow decisions, delivery friction, and burned-out tech leads, even in teams with strong engineers and modern tooling. Drawing from real coaching sessions, training group discussions, and concrete case studies, this talk explores where tech leads consistently get stuck. For each pattern, it looks at what the tech lead thought the problem was, what it turned out to be, and the small but meaningful shifts that helped them move forward: from rethinking 1-on-1s, to making expectations explicit, to letting go without losing trust. This isn’t a talk about abstract “soft skills.” It’s about the invisible leadership work tech leads are expected to do without ever being taught how. Attendees will leave with concrete ways to spot people problems early, make expectations explicit, and reduce the load they carry as tech leads. If you’ve ever thought, “I didn’t expect the role to be this hard,” this talk is for you.

Session Speakers

Anemari Fiser

O'Reilly Author and Tech Lead trainer