Tech leads and managers can have an overlap. Tech leads code, but only have one team. Managers often have 2-5 teams and pick up project management tasks. Tech l

Tech leads and managers can have an overlap. Tech leads code, but only have one team. Managers often have 2-5 teams and pick up project management tasks. Tech leads are not expected to work with the product manager to flesh out a business case for expanding the scope of a project to retire technical debt or sit in front of the VP of Engineering (director/senior director in a large org; small orgs have entirely different roles than this anyway) and explain why the project is slated to take three months longer than initial estimates. There are three jobs of the tech EM - support the team (be the shit umbrella - navigate the bureaucracy), get the business a condensed version of what is going on with that part of the system, and all the other rest of the work to support a human organization that no longer has secretaries and administrators to just handle it. In a lot of other non-tech non-knowledge worker jobs, supporting the general organization is abstracted to middle management instead, and a manager gets drawn further into task breakdown and enforcement. That's the difference.