#84 - Tech Consulting and Upskilling Others Through Livestreams - Laurențiu Spilcă

“The route of becoming a technical leader is helping others up-skill and grow. Once you learn that helping others grow is your objective, then you become a leader." Laurențiu Spilcă is a development lead and trainer at Endava. He is an author of multiple books and a frequent coding livestreamer on YouTube. In this episode, Laurențiu shared his experience as a developer consultant and provided his view on dealing with the expectation for a consultant or tech lead to know about everything in technology. Laurențiu then shared the importance of soft skills and why it is important for every developer to improve them, in particular when doing code reviews and technical interviews. Laurențiu also shared advice on how to deal with toxic culture when consulting and the importance of not having emotional attachments to the projects. Towards the end, Laurențiu shared about his YouTube channel and coding livestream sessions, along with the reasons he started them. He also gave practical tips on how we can produce and structure our content based on his vast experience publishing books, courses, and livestreams. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:59] Developer Consultant Role - [00:09:06] Knowing About Everything - [00:12:17] The Case for Upgrading Tech Stack - [00:17:33] Importance of Soft Skills - [00:21:58] Improving Soft Skills - [00:24:40] Tips on Code Review - [00:29:26] Outsider Treatment - [00:31:01] Project Attachment - [00:35:35] Starting YouTube Channel - [00:37:00] Coding Livestream - [00:40:24] Tips for Producing Content - [00:42:35] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:46:13] _____ Laurențiu Spilcă’s Bio Laurentiu Spilca is a dedicated development lead and trainer at Endava, where he leads and consults on multiple projects from various locations in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Laurentiu believes it’s essential to not only deliver high-quality software but to also share knowledge and help others to up-skill, which has driven him to design and teach courses related to Java technologies and deliver presentations and workshops. He is the author of Spring Security in Action and Spring Quickly. Follow Laurențiu: Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/c/LaurentiuSpilca Website – https://laurspilca.com/ Twitter – @laurspilca LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren%C5%A3iu-spilc%C4%83-01a931107/ Our Sponsor Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/84.