At most companies tech lead means someone who is planning the technical work of a team, but is not the manager. The tech lead is an engineer. So that company ha

At most companies tech lead means someone who is planning the technical work of a team, but is not the manager. The tech lead is an engineer. So that company has separated manager and tech leadership. Google works this way. There are some groups at google where someone does both tech lead and manager, they call that person the TLM.