The Loneliest Career Jump: From Developer to Tech Lead

Source: Dev.to

I still remember my first time being asked to lead.
It wasn’t a formal promotion — just my manager saying, “You understand this system best. Can you guide the new hire through his first ticket?” I nodded confidently. Then I panicked.

I knew how to build the feature myself. I could have coded it in two hours. But teaching someone else? Breaking down the problem? Reviewing their code without crushing their confidence? I had no roadmap for that.

The Gap in Leadership Training

For months now, I’ve been quietly talking to developers about this exact transition. The story is always the same:

We’re brilliant at promoting coders. We’re terrible at preparing leaders.

When you’re learning to code, the path is clear:

1. FreeCodeCamp or Codecademy
2. YouTube tutorials
3. Stack Overflow
4. Build projects
5. Apply for jobs

When you’re learning to lead? Silence.

Suddenly, you’re expected to:

• Give feedback that motivates instead of demoralizes
• Conduct code reviews without crushing confidence
• Make architectural decisions and anticipate downstream consequences
• Communicate difficult truths with empathy

Real Stories

Last month, I coffee’d with Sarah, a senior engineer at a mid‑sized tech company.

“I got promoted six months ago,” she told me. “I cried three times last week.”
“Because of the technical complexity?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Because I had to tell a junior developer his approach was wrong for the fifth time. Because I don’t know how to say ‘this isn’t working’ without watching his face fall. Because I stay up at night wondering if I’m crushing someone’s love for this work.”
She paused. “I miss when problems were in the code, not in people.”

Imagine a basketball player stepping into their first NBA game without ever practicing free throws.
Imagine a surgeon performing their first operation without residency.
Yet in tech, we throw developers into leadership with zero reps—no practice, no safe space to fail, no objective feedback.

Imagining a Solution

What if you could:

• Practice code reviews with AI junior developers who don’t take feedback personally?
• Run sprint planning with virtual teammates before doing it with your actual team?
• Make architectural decisions and immediately see the downstream consequences?
• Give difficult feedback and get evaluated on both clarity and empathy?

What if you could build leadership muscle memory before the stakes were real?

A Leadership Flight Simulator

I’m creating a leadership flight simulator for developers. It starts simple: a chat interface where you mentor an AI “junior developer” through a coding task. You give guidance, they ask questions (sometimes frustrating ones), you review their code, and they implement your feedback. No human egos. No career consequences. Just pure practice.

The vision is bigger—multiple AI teammates with different personalities and skill sets, project simulations, progression tracking—but it starts with one simple question:

Can we create a safe space to practice becoming the leaders our teams need?

Why Now?

1. AI is changing the value equation – it can provide realistic, low‑stakes practice environments.
2. The next generation deserves better – new developers shouldn’t have to learn leadership the hard way.

I’m at the beginning of this journey. I have more questions than answers.

Call for Feedback

If you’ve made the jump from developer to lead, I’m not pitching a product—I’m asking for your perspective.

• Is this a real problem?
• Would a practice space help?
• What would it need to be truly useful?

If this resonates—if you’ve felt that lonely jump from coder to leader—I’d be grateful for your thoughts in the comments. I’ll be sharing updates here as the first simple prototype takes shape.

Because maybe, just maybe, we can build the playbook that should have existed all along.