I became a tech lead two years after graduating - here is why

Leadership is never given, it is only acknowledged after the fact. So, do not wait. Start Leading.

In software companies, there are numerous problems to solve and always less people to solve them. If you are aspiring to be a tech lead, do not wait for your manager to hand you the title before you do the job. Such a wait is useless.

The way you become a tech lead is by doing the job without the title. The title just follows. Here are some ways to start.

Triage bugs and features in backlog below the fold

Almost every team has tickets in the backlog that are never triaged and pretty old. Take a stab at keeping that list tidy.

Your team & tech lead will appreciate it. As an added benefit, you may find a very critical idea buried in there which could help you make a large impact in the future.

Be the guardian of documentation

Great and elegant documentation is an art. Almost all documentation are stale.

If you made an effort to keep documentation updated, the benefit will be almost instantly realized by your entire team. You will also learn about areas of the team that you never touch in your day to day work.

Soon enough you will be a well known rockstar within your team

Join every live outage

System outages are a great learning and helping opportunity.

If you attended every live outage, you will pick up patterns and mitigation steps that very few people get trained on. Over time, every on call engineer would seek your advice to quickly mitigate a production incident. They would look up to you for help.

Within a span of one year of practicing these, I am sure you will be offered a role of a tech lead.