Tech Lead interview question · Most asked
How much should a tech lead code?
Summary
Enough to stay credible and close to the code, but not on the critical path. In practice a tech lead on a team of six to eight usually has 30–50% of their time for hands-on work, because reviews, design support, planning and cross-team work take the rest.
Longer Answer
Plan the lead at reduced capacity and make leadership work visible in planning. Keep work that maintains context without blocking the team: prototypes and spikes, tooling and developer-experience fixes, pairing as navigator, small non-urgent tickets. Give away the riskiest critical-path tickets — with support — so the lead isn't the bottleneck and others grow. Never stop coding entirely; designs reviewed by someone who no longer touches the code get worse.
Key Points
- Plan 30–50% coding capacity
- Keep prototypes, tooling, pairing; give away critical-path tickets
- Batch reviews and questions to protect focus time
Deep dive: Coding vs Leading
Explanation
What interviewers look for
A concrete range with reasoning, awareness that leadership work is real capacity, and a strategy for what to keep vs delegate.
Red flags
- 'As much as possible' — the lead becomes the bottleneck
- 'None' — losing technical credibility
More most-asked Tech Lead questions
- Tell me about the most complex system you designed or led.
- You join as tech lead of an existing team. What do you do in the first 90 days?
- Tell me about a time you made a technical decision that turned out to be wrong.
- Tell me about a time you had to push back on a deadline or scope.
- What does a tech lead do, and how is it different from an engineering manager?
- Two senior engineers have argued about an approach for weeks. What do you do?
- How do you keep code reviews fast without lowering quality?
- How do you manage technical debt on a team that is always under delivery pressure?