Startups fail. Code gets rewritten. But the leaders you develop? They go on to shape teams, define cultures, and grow others long after you’re gone.
Legacy in tech isn’t just about what you shipped. It’s about who you shaped.
We have a word for this kind of ripple effect, your coaching tree.
Legacy Lessons from the NFL
Legacy for an NFL head coach can be measured in two ways. Wins and the coaches you influenced. And increasingly, the second might matter more.
Sure, Bill Belichick has six rings. But his disciples? Not many succeeded. Meanwhile, Bill Walsh has three rings, and a coaching tree that reshaped football for decades. Mike Holmgren, Andy Reid, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and a dozen others all trace their leadership DNA back to him.
Walsh’s impact wasn’t just in the games he won, but in the way others learned to lead because of him.
Why Tech Gets Legacy Wrong
In tech, we tend to celebrate the hands-on leader the founder who still commits code, the CTO who jumps in during outages, the architect who leads from the front. That kind of involvement can spark momentum, but it often creates dependency.
If your team can’t move forward without you, you’ve created a dependency, not a legacy. If your absence causes systems or values to collapse, the foundation wasn’t durable.
Real leadership shows itself when things keep running. When others step up, make good decisions, and carry your values forward without prompting.
Your legacy lives in how many people can lead, ship, and solve problems because of the time they spent with you.
What Coaching Trees Look Like and Why They Matter
This pattern of influence outlasting direct control, shows up across the business world, and it’s increasingly visible in tech.
Legacy is defined less by your direct contributions and more by the leaders who continue your work. It’s about the values you pass on, the growth you cultivate, and the people who step into leadership because of your influence.
- A staff engineer who mentors others because you taught her how to give feedback with care.
- A team lead who diffuses tension because you modeled how to invite disagreement without escalation.
- A developer who became a people manager, not because they were the loudest, but because you saw potential no one else did.
These are the real indicators of impact. People who carry your mindset forward. People who say, “I do it this way because someone once showed me it mattered.”
Of course, not every coaching tree thrives. Some leaders micromanage or fail to delegate real responsibility, leaving behind burned-out teams instead of capable successors. And sometimes, even promising leaders move on without passing the culture forward.
Great leadership creates a chain reaction, shaping people who go on to shape others, passing values forward beyond your reach.
Coaching Trees in Today’s Tech Orgs
This pattern is already visible across today’s tech landscape.
You can see a leader’s impact in where their former lieutenants end up, and how they lead.
At Google, early engineering leaders like Urs Hölzle and Ben Treynor Sloss helped establish the SRE and infrastructure principles that many former Googlers, now leading teams at startups and major tech firms, carried outward. The global SRE community owes much to the people who shaped that original practice.
At Facebook (Meta), long-serving technical leaders including Mike Schroepfer and Jay Parikh helped forge a culture and onboarding experience that several alumni brought into leadership across the startup ecosystem.
These aren’t accidents. They’re the result of intentional leadership cultures, ones where growing future leaders is part of the job, not a bonus.
Are You Growing One?
You can’t put “coaching tree” on a quarterly OKR. It’s a lagging indicator, something you only see in hindsight, when your former teammates are out in the world leading others, making calls, and passing along your lessons in ways you never scripted.
So how do you get there? Start small:
- Sponsor someone overlooked. Open a door.
- Give context, not orders. For example, if you assign a critical bug fix, explain why this bug matters to customers or the business, not just that it’s urgent.
- Let people fail safely. Growth is uneven.
- Codify what matters. Culture scales through clarity.
- Step back. Let others lead.
None of this replaces building great products. But it ensures your leadership outlives them.
Building What Lasts
Some leaders are remembered for the products they shipped. The best will be remembered for the people they shaped, the ones who went on to grow others, build teams, and define a culture. That’s your coaching tree.
And what tends to last isn’t just what you build, but who you build up.