Suggestions to work with an unresponsive tech lead

Posted by firelice@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 21 comments

Context: 6 yoe, faang exp, senior title, current company 2 years.

I joined two years ago, but the current experience has been interesting to say the least. My tech lead doesn't do anything? Often, the engineers he manages will be discussing architecture via Slack or Teams he never once steps in to give his input. PRs will never be looked at by him or will he write code. Often major incidents spawn over the very little code he pushes after at best consulting one other person or just bypassing branch rules.

He will be directly @'d in Slack threads discussing technology or timelines around specific projects he manages and not answer until another engineer steps in to answer.

We will have major timelines and events about systems we manage not be given too us until a week before it's supposed to happen resulting in major crunch. Literally, he knew I would be gone for a week in July for my wedding and in the Retro he mentioned PTO events causing delays.

For example, he told his management that a project would be done in two months despite not even techplanning it or discussing it at all with his engineers. That project ended up taking over two years(just launched in prod).

What is a tech lead's role if not decisions about architecture, code review input, or even timelines and project timelines? I am often ghosted or have to ping multiple times a day for even a one word answer.

Like I understand life happens, he had a kid a couple years ago that is taking up a lot of time, but we need someone to lead our team or like talk to his team. There will be days I just see him at standup, I spy on his calendar and that's his only thing in it.