The $180k tech lead who can't unblock an $80k junior developer.
Seen this in banking tech more times than I can count. Junior dev stuck on Kafka consumer issue. Spent half a day trying to figure out why messages weren't coming through. Tech lead in back to back meetings all morning. When he finally gets free he looks at it for 10 minutes and says "I don't know, haven't worked with Kafka in like 18 months."
I walked over. Took me 5 minutes. Same consumer group name plugged into multiple topics. One consumer eating everything, others starving. Basic mistake but you'd only know if you actually worked with the stack.
Here's the thing. This tech lead isn't stupid. He's just been in so many alignment meetings and architecture reviews and stakeholder calls that he lost touch with the actual technical work. Got promoted for being good technically, now spends zero time being technical.
Pattern I keep seeing: promote someone for technical depth, pull them into meetings constantly, wonder why they can't help the team with technical problems anymore.
Team gets frustrated. Tech lead gets frustrated. Everyone knows something's wrong but nobody wants to say it out loud.
Not sure what the fix is honestly. You need people focused on big picture stuff. But when that person can't unblock a junior dev on a basic problem something broke along the way.
How does your org handle this? Do tech leads actually stay technical or do they drift into pure coordination after a few months?
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