“Let me just deep-dive the whole repo before I start leading…”
Cool story. You’ll be dead before you’re done.
Here’s the truth they don’t tell you in leadership onboarding (if that even exists):
You will never fully understand the codebase again. And that’s okay.
This post is for every developer turned leader who’s struggling to let go of “knowing everything” and embrace leading anyway.
Let’s talk about how.
🧠 Step 1: Ditch the ego
You’re not less valuable because you can’t quote line 342 of utils/helpers.js. You’re more valuable when you know who can, and you make space for them to do it well.
Leading isn’t about being the best coder in the room.
It’s about making the room better.
🛠️ Step 2: Focus on context, not control
You don’t need to memorize code—you need to understand purpose.
- What is the system trying to do?
- Where are the danger zones?
- Who built what and why?
If you can navigate the big picture and support the people owning the details, you’re doing your job.
👥 Step 3: Build a trust network
You don’t need to know the whole codebase—because your team does.
Lead like a network router, not a single point of failure. Ask questions. Show curiosity. Let your engineers teach you (spoiler: they want to).
A leader who admits what they don’t know builds a team that fills in the gaps.
🧭 Step 4: Be a decision compass, not a debugger
When you stop clinging to the code, you start having time to:
- Remove blockers
- Advocate for better processes
- Defend your team’s time
- Spot architecture drift
- See the human bugs before the ones in production
Your value shifts from “I fixed it” to “I made sure it didn’t break in the first place.”
🔥 Step 5: Redefine what ‘technical’ means
Tech leadership is still technical. Just not in the way you’re used to.
It’s systems thinking. Risk mapping. Translating between humans and machines (and other humans). Prioritizing. Synthesizing. Communicating.
If you still think “real leaders write code,” congrats—you just volunteered to be your team’s bottleneck.
🧨 TL;DR
You’ll never know every line again. That’s not the goal.
Knowing who does, why it matters, and how to support them? That’s leadership.
Let go of omniscience.
Lead with clarity.
Control is a crutch.
Lead. Don’t Ctrl.
✊ leaddontctrl.com
Rebellious tech leadership. No code coverage required.
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