> Keep reminding the team I need a review but only the tech lead actually reviews anything idea i (less healthy): maybe that gives you an angle -- if the tech

> Keep reminding the team I need a review but only the tech lead actually reviews anything idea i (less healthy): maybe that gives you an angle -- if the tech lead is behaving like this with your other colleagues, maybe you can privately agree to review each other's PRs promptly, and cut the tech lead out of the review loop! starve the environment of unreviewed code stuck in limbo for your tech lead to steal, see what happens. this would be dysfunctional in a different way, but hey, a change is as good as a holiday, right? idea ii (more healthy): re: "reminding the team" to review PRs, a different way to do code reviews is "pick a victim". pick a specific non-tech-lead colleague and request that they review your PR. maybe roll a die or round-robin them to avoid picking the same colleague each time. that way the responsibility can't be diluted and you can hold a specific colleague accountable . before you start doing this, you could call it out in a team meeting (standup? retro? having a chat around the coffee machine?) so everyone has a heads up that you're going to change things. you could even say something like "i've noticed that PRs sometimes get stuck in limbo for weeks without review. to spread out the review load, let's try having each PR author picking a specific person as the reviewer. pick a different person each time. if someone asks you to review, please leave a review in a day or call out if you're overloaded and need someone else to step up and review". If the founder is in earshot and/or you get any pushback, you can say that spreading the review workload and working to get changes through review promptly should increase the velocity that the team is able to ship changes! This is (a) likely to be true, and (b) will make it much harder for someone to argue against what you're proposing, because shipping changes faster is what the founder wants.