The team leader profession emerged thanks to the active growth of the IT industry.
This job revolves around a person who can competently allocate resources to obtain an effective solution to the tasks assigned to the team. The job search site offers to learn more about the profession, what functional responsibilities are assigned to the leader, what career prospects he/she has, and what salary such a specialist can expect.
Right from the very job title, it becomes clear that the team leader is a “locomotive”, the driving force of a team that is busy solving one common task. Each team includes people with different personalities, abilities, and responsibilities. Even if each employee conscientiously fulfills his/her duties but does not coordinate his/her actions with other team members, it will be quite difficult to achieve impressive results.
A team leader organizes and coordinates the actions of all team members, understands the technical part of web development, motivates each employee, and controls every stage of the product creation process. At the same time, this worker communicates with the executives and customers while being responsible for the team’s success and failure. During the development process, a team leader is the main link between the developers, the customer, and the company's management.
As a rule, experienced developers become team leaders who can find a mistake in the work of a subordinate and correct it in time. A team leader is not engaged in the development himself/herself due to the lack of time that is spent on planning, prognosis, organizing, and optimizing the process. In addition, it is necessary to distribute the workload and time among team members, considering the skills and abilities of each. And this is far from all that the team leader does during his/her working hours.
Since a team leader is responsible for the entire project, he/she must see what the final result should look like and be aware of everything that is happening at the moment: what errors have arisen, how to correct them, and who should do it. A team leader evaluates the volume and scale of work, budget, and deadlines for completing tasks. Based on this, the company sets its priorities and plans various tasks.
One of the key aspects of success is the human factor. A team leader needs to find an approach for everyone, to see what motivates each individual and the team as a whole. In order for the team to follow his/her instructions, this specialist should be tough enough in his/her decisions and remember to be flexible where necessary. He/she should listen to the ideas and suggestions of subordinates and reasonably refute unsuccessful ones. Only such an approach will allow him/her to earn the respect of his/her colleagues.
A team leader participates in the selection of employees for the team and is present at interviews. On behalf of the entire team, the leader communicates with the customer, signs contracts, and works with reporting documentation. Besides that, his/her competence includes finding a compromise between the customer’s needs and the team’s capabilities.
Now, it’s clear what a team leader does, who he/she is, and why he/she is needed. With such fairly serious responsibilities, a candidate for the position must have the necessary skills and abilities. The analysis of vacancies shows that employers require the following things from the applicants in most cases:
This is not a complete list of all the requirements that an employer can apply to an applicant. There may be others, and they depend on the area of the future project. In addition, it is also important to have personal qualities, such as responsibility, creativity, punctuality, patience, determination, stress resistance, etc.
If you aim to get a job in a company and work as a team leader, you’ll be responsible for functional responsibilities that can be divided into three groups:
To better understand who a team leader is, let's highlight the job’s main positive and negative aspects.
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Pros |
Cons |
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High demand in the labor market |
Irregular working hours |
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Good salary |
Frequent occurrence of stressful situations |
|
Career prospects |
High level of responsibility |
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Opportunity to develop and gain new knowledge and experience. The IT industry is extremely tough to handle without self-development. So, in order to lead a team and see mistakes, you need to know more than the team members |
Despite the negative aspects, the position of team leader has quite significant advantages. If you have leadership qualities, you know how to communicate with people, set goals, and achieve them, then why not try yourself as a Team Leader? On the LC Work job search site, you can find vacancies that may be of interest to both experienced team leaders and novice specialists.
Getting a position as a team leader without any work experience is pretty much impossible. Besides extensive knowledge and practical skills, you will need experience in the area where you plan to work.
If you plan your future in advance, you should choose areas related to computer science and programming even at the stage of entering a higher educational institution. In addition, it is necessary to know how to work with human resources and manage them effectively.
After receiving the appropriate education, you need to work as a programmer for several years. You should constantly learn, show initiative, demonstrate leadership qualities, and take responsibility while working. Oftentimes, developers who have grown to the Senior level at their job move to the position of a team leader.
Remember that technical knowledge is not all you need to manage a team. After all, you will have to work with people; hence, basic knowledge of psychology, management, and effective planning will be useful. All this knowledge can be acquired either through specialized training or through self-education. A lot of good and helpful literature has been written on these topics, and it can help you improve your educational level and become an excellent leader.
One of the benefits of the Team Leader position is a fairly wide field for a career. Having started to work in a small company, a specialist can become one of the leaders over time. Or change an employer and go to work in a big company with numerous projects. In such organizations, there is usually still a position of "leader above leaders", and with successful experience in implementing several projects, it is quite possible to apply for such a position.
There have been examples in history when successful team leaders joined the executives and received a share in the business.
As for wages, it all depends on the region of work and the size of the employing company. The average salary in Ukraine is UAH 50 000.
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