The tech lead sounds like a very pragmatic developer who just wants to get work done quickly without hassle. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does no

The tech lead sounds like a very pragmatic developer who just wants to get work done quickly without hassle. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does not mean he is always right either. He probably has most likely opened up a few cans of worms and as a result is very conservative in his approach. Younger people tend to bring a lot of energy, but sometimes come into a company and want to shake things up - then they get bored and leave a bunch of fad-oriented programming code for the remaining team to maintain for 5 years. The copy/paste would be a warning sign to me, but it could also be that he knows a generic solution would become extremely complex with problems that you do not yet have the experience to forsee. It's not really possible to understand which is true based on your email. Anyway, I would try to get more information from him to see if he is being lazy or pragmatic. When he says thing that you disagree with - have him explain it to you. It might be that he has very good reasons - or that he is just resisting new technology that he doesn't understand. I would try to find that out first. All that being said - you can learn a lot from a bad situation as well as a good one. You can learn what not to do!