You ARE a manager, but they’re calling it tech lead. There are (or used to be?) companies where tech lead does not have management duties.<p>I was torn between the tech/management split. It seemed management was unavoidable. A really good VP Eng. advised me: if you hate management, just don’t do it. You will be bad at it and you will hate your life. That was excellent advice, that served me well.<p>You are doing management and you don’t want to. Fix that.
I've found most tech lead jobs to be heavy on the leadership. Leadership could be separated from management, but I find today it rarely is.<p>The best tech leads I've worked with have owned that, and helped their team do the tech while leading the work from a high level. The worst have insisted on holding in to low level work, letting their team suffer without direction.<p>It could be a company problem, it could be a leader problem, but in my experience it's been a company/leader communication problem, or a leader failing to follow through on what they agreed to.