Welcome to Made Tech Insiders, where we interview the talented individuals shaping our organisation. We’ll explore career journeys, project highlights, and future tech trends, showcasing what makes Made Tech an exceptional place to work and innovate.
Tess Barnes shares her take on leadership in software engineering, the importance of creating safe learning spaces and the value work/life balance brings to career growth.
Q: What do you like most about being a lead software engineer?
I did an interview similar to this 4 years ago and I’ve learnt a lot in that time. I’ve been in a lead role on and off most of my career and it’s nice to feel that I’m in that space of being a multiplier. I enjoy unblocking issues, translating things for people and I’m heavily investing in the people around me – the people coming through Made Tech, career changers and our apprentices too. I believe really strongly that my experience is only helpful when it helps more than just me.
I consider part of my leadership remit very much to enable. Sometimes that can mean getting through prototypes quickly on a project or enabling the really talented people that work at Made Tech. My take on leadership is about making it easy for those people to share their talents and deliver awesome stuff for society.
Q: How do you go about inspiring those people?
Listening is key. Everyone brings their own set of motivations, sometimes they’re really open about sharing them and sometimes they take a little while. Often when it comes to inspiring others it’s about encouraging them to realise they can go further with an idea or think about things differently.
It’s about saying, ‘okay you found this wonderful thing and that leads onto 2 topics that are beyond where you are now. But this is where we could be and this is where your journey can go. Enjoy this bit because it leads to greater things.’ It’s about having that discussion on how we start hitting a growth mindset. Encouraging people to recognise what they know today won’t take them far enough for tomorrow.
As I said, it’s also necessary sometimes to encourage people to think in another way. Asking those questions on when we should make a decision to change the way we’re thinking about something. It’s important to work with people and say ‘I’m glad you’ve asked that question, let’s explore that together’ or ‘let’s see how this plays out and how you can do it differently.’
Being able to have these conversations with people in a safe and non-judgmental space is important. Let’s grow in an exploratory environment where it isn’t about judging, it’s about learning.
Q: How do you stretch that thinking to the wider engineering community at Made Tech?
I have a 2025 commitment around being more connected myself but also helping other people be more connected. Being in a consultancy can be a really tricky balance between our valuable face-to-face time with our clients and time with our engineering community.
Helping my colleagues feel in touch and inspired is important to me. There’s lots of people around Made Tech that are doing that and it’s something that I feel we’ll all benefit from doubling down on in engineering.
We’re mostly at the coalface in the delivery and don’t necessarily connect with each other more than once or twice a week. That can be tricky, so making sure that connection’s still there, and still valuable, is important. We’re connecting to feel human in a space so our creative juices are still flowing. That’s my mission this year.
Q: You spoke about growth, do you have any advice for anyone looking to grow and learn?
For those that really enjoy the code, tinkering and have that creative mindset – still enjoying it is really important to growth. I say to whoever I’m on a course with, a rested mind is a learning mind. So if you want to be in tech, of course you should be interested in it. But I would also say, have other things you’re interested in that can help give your brain a rest.
If you play music or you’re interested in sports for example, it gives you an offset which brings in creative thought. For anyone who wants to be sustainable in the tech industry and software, allow yourself that time. It’s not about constant hands on the keyboard. There’s a world within software but outside that too – finding the balance is important.
Q: Any books or resources you’d recommend for further learning?
Interestingly, of the 3 that I suggested 4 years ago, at least 2 of them I’d still mention today. That’s the Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford on devops. The second is Rebel Talent by Francesca Gino and when following the rules is a good idea and when not following the rules is a good idea.
A new addition I’d recommend is Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. It’s not just for apprentices, but anyone who wants to view or review software craftsmanship with a learning and curious mindset.
Q: Building on that, what areas are you looking at for your own development?
I have learned every day. I’ve made it my mission to not stay still. I am really intrigued with systems thinking. I have always thought that way and I found it quite difficult in the earlier years of my life to translate that lateral thought process on deliveries.
Lots of people think in lots of different ways. I’ve always been a person that can zoom out to see the bigger picture and think ‘what’s actually causing this thing?’ On a project we’re often looking at a small part. We can see what happens in that space, but actually if we zoom out we can see that all of this is happening because something somewhere else is happening and having an impact.
For me, it’s about learning the lexicon that everybody is using in this system’s thinking space and then figuring out where I can apply it. I’ve been writing code professionally for about 20 years and the most interesting thing to me now is recognising how systems work. Yes, of course the code is important, operating in a lean DevOps style is important – but also thinking ‘how is it going to work in this wider framework?’
Q: Is there anything else you’re focusing on this year?
I want to extend the range of training courses that I’ve written and offer. I’m talking to Dom, our L&D Specialist Technical – Engineering Coach about the curriculum for our apprentices. They have a set behaviours, skills and knowledge framework they need to hit, but it’s how we express that in a way that works for consultancy life and tech. That’s a focus I’d love to bring.
For the last cohort, I ran training on getting secure pipelines running and making sure that they’re secure as well as sessions on Docker and containerisation – which are kind of the nuts and bolts around how things get built and hosted. Those deserve a bit of an update because our tech constantly moves on and I’d like to add a few things around containerisation to that as well.
It’s important for me to make sure that our core values and consultancy skills that we add to the apprentice standard are covered – Dom does an awesome job at that. We cover the software skills and practices but then we also have this DevOps coverage. I really hope to be part of a collective in Made Tech doing this training.
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About the Author
Tess Barnes
Lead Software Engineer at Made Tech
