Seifeddine Bejaoui

Leading High-Performing Frontend Teams: A Practical Guide for Tech Leads

Leading a frontend engineering team is fundamentally different from being a great individual contributor. As a Lead Frontend Engineer at Prediko, I learned that technical leadership isn't about being the best coder—it's about enabling your team to do their best work.

In this article, I'll share the practical strategies, frameworks, and lessons I've developed over 10+ years of leading frontend teams across startups, scale-ups, and enterprise environments. Whether you're a new tech lead or looking to refine your leadership approach, these insights will help you build high-performing teams that ship quality code consistently.

The Transition: From IC to Tech Lead

When I first became a tech lead, I made a common mistake: I tried to do everything myself. I'd review every PR in detail, write most of the complex code, and be involved in every technical decision.

That approach doesn't scale.

The shift from individual contributor to tech lead requires a fundamental change in mindset:

  • From: "How can I write this code?"

  • To: "How can I help my team write better code?"

  • From: "I need to fix this bug."

  • To: "How can I prevent this type of bug from happening again?"

  • From: "I'll implement this feature."

  • To: "How can I guide the team to implement this feature well?"

Building Trust Through Code Reviews

Code reviews are your primary tool for mentoring and maintaining quality. But done poorly, they can demotivate your team. Done well, they're a learning opportunity for everyone.

The Code Review Framework I Use

1. Start with the positive Always acknowledge what's good about the code. This makes feedback easier to receive.

2. Ask questions, don't just dictate Instead of "This should use a hook," try "Have you considered extracting this into a custom hook? It might make it reusable."

3. Explain the "why" Don't just say "This is wrong." Explain the impact: "This could cause a memory leak because the event listener isn't cleaned up."

4. Suggest alternatives, don't just criticize If something could be better, offer a concrete suggestion or link to documentation.

5. Know when to let it go Not every PR needs to be perfect. If the code works, is readable, and follows patterns, sometimes "good enough" is good enough.

Example: A Constructive Code Review

Instead of just: "This is inefficient"

Try this approach:

Thanks for implementing this feature! The logic looks solid.

I noticed we're filtering the products array on every render. Since this list doesn't change often, we could memoize it with useMemo to avoid recalculating on every render. Here's a quick example:

const filteredProducts = useMemo(
  () => products.filter((p) => p.status === "active"),
  [products],
);

This would improve performance, especially as the product list grows. What do you think?

Mentoring: Growing Your Team

Mentoring isn't about having all the answers. It's about helping people find their own solutions.

The GROW Framework for Technical Mentoring

I use a modified version of the GROW framework for technical discussions:

Goal: What are you trying to achieve?
Reality: What's the current situation? What have you tried?
Options: What are the possible approaches? (Here's where you share knowledge)
Will: What will you do? (Let them decide, with your guidance)

Creating Learning Opportunities

At Prediko, I created several programs to help the team grow:

1. Tech Talks Monthly sessions where team members present on something they learned—a new library, a pattern they discovered, or a problem they solved.

2. Pair Programming Sessions Regular pairing sessions, not just when someone is stuck. This spreads knowledge and builds relationships.

3. Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) When we make significant technical decisions, we document them. This helps everyone understand the reasoning and creates a knowledge base.

4. Code Review Learning After significant code reviews, I'd sometimes follow up with a quick explanation of the patterns or concepts involved.

Technical Decision-Making: Balancing Speed and Quality

As a tech lead, you're constantly making trade-offs. Here's my framework:

The Decision Matrix

For each technical decision, consider:

  1. Impact: How many people/features does this affect?
  2. Reversibility: Can we change this later without major cost?
  3. Time pressure: Do we need to decide now, or can we research?
  4. Team consensus: Do we need buy-in, or can I decide alone?

High impact, hard to reverse: Get team input, document the decision
Low impact, easy to reverse: Make the call, move fast
High impact, easy to reverse: Try it, measure, iterate

Example: Choosing a State Management Solution

When we needed to refactor state management at Prediko:

  • Impact: High (affects entire app)
  • Reversibility: Medium (significant refactor, but doable)
  • Time pressure: Medium (we had time to evaluate)
  • Team consensus: Needed (everyone would use it)

Decision: We evaluated React Query vs. Redux vs. Zustand. I facilitated discussions, created a comparison document, and we made a team decision. We chose React Query for server state, Zustand for client state. This decision served us well.

Establishing Technical Standards

Without clear standards, code quality degrades over time. Here's what I've found works:

1. Start with the Basics

  • TypeScript strict mode (no any, proper types)
  • ESLint configuration (catch common mistakes)
  • Prettier (consistent formatting)
  • Component structure conventions (where things go)

2. Document Patterns, Not Just Rules

Instead of "Don't use inline styles," document "Use Tailwind classes for styling. Here's our design system guide."

3. Make Standards Easy to Follow

  • Pre-commit hooks that format code automatically
  • IDE configurations shared via .editorconfig
  • Component templates for common patterns
  • Example components that demonstrate best practices

4. Review and Evolve Standards

Standards shouldn't be set in stone. At Prediko, we reviewed our standards quarterly and updated them based on what we learned.

Managing Technical Debt

Technical debt is inevitable. The key is managing it strategically.

The Technical Debt Framework

1. Categorize debt:

  • Critical: Blocks new features or causes bugs
  • High: Slows development significantly
  • Medium: Annoying but manageable
  • Low: Nice to have

2. Plan debt repayment:

  • Critical: Address immediately
  • High: Plan for next sprint
  • Medium: Include in quarterly planning
  • Low: Backlog for when there's time

3. Prevent new debt:

  • Code review gates
  • Architecture reviews for major changes
  • Regular refactoring time (we allocated 20% of each sprint)

Example: The Fragile Codebase

When I joined Prediko, the codebase was fragile. Instead of rewriting everything (which would take months), I:

  1. Identified the most problematic areas (components that broke often)
  2. Created a refactoring roadmap (prioritized by impact)
  3. Allocated dedicated time (20% of each sprint)
  4. Celebrated progress (shared improvements in team meetings)

Within 6 months, we'd stabilized the most critical areas and established patterns that prevented new debt.

Communication: The Overlooked Skill

Technical leadership is as much about communication as it is about code.

Communicating with Product and Design

Speak their language:

  • Instead of "We need to refactor the state management," try "This will make it 3x faster to add new features."
  • Instead of "This is technically complex," explain the user impact.

Set expectations:

  • "This feature will take 2 weeks because we need to refactor the underlying system first."
  • "We can ship this quickly, but we'll need to pay down technical debt next sprint."

Communicating with Your Team

Be transparent:

  • Share context about why decisions are made
  • Explain trade-offs openly
  • Admit when you don't know something

Give feedback regularly:

  • Don't wait for performance reviews
  • Balance positive and constructive feedback
  • Be specific and actionable

Building a Culture of Excellence

Culture isn't something you declare—it's something you build through consistent actions.

Practices That Build Excellence

1. Blameless post-mortems When something breaks, focus on "What can we learn?" not "Who's to blame?"

2. Celebrate learning from mistakes Share stories of bugs that taught us something valuable.

3. Encourage experimentation Allocate time for exploring new technologies or approaches.

4. Recognize different strengths Not everyone needs to be a React expert. Some team members excel at CSS, others at performance optimization, others at testing.

Measuring Success

How do you know if you're leading effectively?

Team metrics:

  • Velocity (are we shipping consistently?)
  • Code quality (are bugs decreasing?)
  • Team satisfaction (are people growing and happy?)

Individual metrics:

  • Are team members taking on more complex work?
  • Are they contributing to technical decisions?
  • Are they mentoring others?

Product metrics:

  • Are we shipping features that users love?
  • Are we maintaining performance as we scale?

Conclusion: Leadership as a Craft

Technical leadership is a craft that improves with practice. The strategies I've shared here are starting points—adapt them to your team, your product, and your context.

Remember: Great tech leads don't create dependency—they create capability. Your success isn't measured by how much code you write, but by how well your team performs when you're not in the room.

The frontend team I led at Prediko didn't just ship features—they grew as engineers, made better technical decisions, and built a codebase that could scale. That's the real measure of technical leadership.

Interested in discussing technical leadership strategies? I'm always happy to share experiences and learn from fellow tech leads.