Anemari Fiser
O'Reilly Author and Tech Lead trainer
Barcelona, Spain
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Anemari Fiser is a tech leadership coach and trainer who helps engineers grow into confident, people-centered tech leads.
She is the author of O’Reilly’s book ‘Leveling Up as a Tech Lead’ and the creator of the O’Reilly course ‘Soft Skills for Tech Leads’.
With over a decade of experience in the tech industry, she has held roles from software engineer to engineering leader.
As an independent coach and trainer, Anemari has worked with 500+ engineers and trained 400+ tech leads across different organisations worldwide.
She also shares practical leadership insights with a community of 30,000+ tech professionals on LinkedIn.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Becoming a tech lead: from tech to people
The tech lead role is one of the most misunderstood and overlooked positions in the tech industry. Developers are promoted for their coding skills, yet success in this role is measured by leadership, not just technical ability. This shift can be disorienting because being a tech lead isn’t just about technology, it’s about people.
Drawing from my experience at Thoughtworks and training 300+ tech leads, I’ll explore why this role is uniquely complex. Positioned at the intersection of people, technology, and business, tech leads must develop soft skills like delegation, conflict resolution, and team alignment, yet most get little support.
I’ll cover why most tech problems are people problems, 3 key mindset shifts, and 7 essential soft skills tech leads need, with practical steps to apply.
Shifting from a technical role to leadership is tough but an opportunity for growth. Whether you're aspiring, new, or experienced, this talk sheds light on this overlooked role by focusing on people.
Lightning Talks 2
Lightning talks (approx 10-15 minutes each)
Talk 1: Power Games – From Fear to Freedom - Shomaila Kausar
Power dynamics (called Hersketeknikker) aren't a relic from 1981, they're alive and well in today's workplaces, in meeting rooms, on Slack, and in code reviews.
In this talk, we take theese manipulation tactics out of the textbooks and into reality. You'll learn to recognize them when they happen — directed at you, around you, or perhaps without even realizing you're using them yourself. And most importantly: what you can actually do about it.
For those who experience it.
For those who witness it.
For everyone who wants to contribute to a healthier workplace.
Because the tech industry deserves psychological safety — not just technical excellence.
Talk 2: 400 tech leads, same problems - none of them technical - Anemari Fiser
After training and coaching more than 400 tech leads across different companies, industries, and levels of experience, one pattern keeps repeating: when tech leads struggle, it’s rarely a technical gap.
In this talk, Anemari Fiser shares the most common challenges tech leads bring into coaching sessions and why “getting better technically” almost never fixes them. Instead, the real blockers show up as overload, unclear expectations, ownership confusion, and assumed alignment. These patterns consistently lead to slow decisions, delivery friction, and burned-out tech leads, even in teams with strong engineers and modern tooling.
Drawing from real coaching sessions, training group discussions, and concrete case studies, this talk explores where tech leads consistently get stuck. For each pattern, it looks at what the tech lead thought the problem was, what it turned out to be, and the small but meaningful shifts that helped them move forward: from rethinking 1-on-1s, to making expectations explicit, to letting go without losing trust.
This isn’t a talk about abstract “soft skills.” It’s about the invisible leadership work tech leads are expected to do without ever being taught how.
Attendees will leave with concrete ways to spot people problems early, make expectations explicit, and reduce the load they carry as tech leads.
If you’ve ever thought, “I didn’t expect the role to be this hard,” this talk is for you.
Talk 3: Conway's law in real life - Oda Hoem
A journey through the challenges and frustrations of being a developer in a product team within a non-product-oriented organization. What happens when you are thrown into a project where a ready-made solution is purchased to replace a critical subsystem—without completing the job of understanding existing processes or integrations? This talk dives into the concrete problems that arose, how we handled them, and the lessons learned after working with a product that was supposed to solve everything, but instead created more chaos
Talk 4: China's App Independence vs Europe's US Dependence - Jill Sarandi
From WeChat to Alipay, China’s digital landscape is dominated by homegrown platforms that shape daily life. In this talk, we’ll explore the contrast between the apps powering China and those popular in Europe, and why this matters more than ever. But the conversation doesn’t stop at comparison. I’ll argue that Europe’s future hinges on its ability to build and embrace its own digital platforms - platforms that reflect European values, protect user data, and foster innovation on home soil.
Part 2/2: From “I’ll do it” to “You own it”
Delegation is one of the most difficult transitions for senior developers stepping into tech lead roles. It often feels faster to just do the work yourself. You worry about quality. You don’t want to micromanage. And yet without delegation, your team can’t grow, and neither can you.
This interactive workshop reframes delegation as a practical scaling skill. We’ll uncover the real blockers that hold experienced developers back and clarify the structural benefits of sharing responsibility.
You will then work through a clear, step-by-step delegation process using a real example from your own work. What exactly should you delegate? To whom? Which delegation strategy fits the situation? How do you set explicit expectations while remaining accountable? And how do you follow up without creating friction?
By the end of the session, you will leave with a concrete delegation plan you can implement immediately with common risks anticipated and addressed upfront.
A tech lead’s delegation journey
Delegation is a journey tech leads have to grow into.
After training and coaching more than 400 tech leads, one pattern appears again and again: many start out unsure what to delegate, afraid of losing control, and spread across everything to make sure nothing goes wrong. It often feels quicker and safer to do the work themselves, even as the role becomes overwhelming.
In this lightning talk, Anemari Fiser shares a tech lead’s delegation journey grounded in real coaching and training examples. The talk follows the shift from holding on too tightly, to taking small, intentional steps toward delegation, building trust in people, and learning how to delegate ownership instead of just tasks.
The journey ends with what delegation looks like when it works: a more autonomous team, clearer ownership, and a tech lead who can focus on the few responsibilities that truly need their attention.
This session offers a concise, honest look at how delegation evolves - and how tech leads can move forward without losing control, quality, or credibility.
400 tech leads, same problems - none of them technical
After training and coaching more than 400 tech leads across different companies, industries, and levels of experience, one pattern keeps repeating: when tech leads struggle, it’s rarely a technical gap.
In this talk, Anemari Fiser shares the most common challenges tech leads bring into coaching sessions and why “getting better technically” almost never fixes them. Instead, the real blockers show up as overload, unclear expectations, ownership confusion, and assumed alignment. These patterns consistently lead to slow decisions, delivery friction, and burned-out tech leads, even in teams with strong engineers and modern tooling.
Drawing from real coaching sessions, training group discussions, and concrete case studies, this talk explores where tech leads consistently get stuck. For each pattern, it looks at what the tech lead thought the problem was, what it turned out to be, and the small but meaningful shifts that helped them move forward: from rethinking 1-on-1s, to making expectations explicit, to letting go without losing trust.
This isn’t a talk about abstract “soft skills.” It’s about the invisible leadership work tech leads are expected to do without ever being taught how.
Attendees will leave with concrete ways to spot people problems early, make expectations explicit, and reduce the load they carry as tech leads.
If you’ve ever thought, “I didn’t expect the role to be this hard,” this talk is for you.
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