I used to work with a guy who was a tech lead on a project. He was getting constant pressure that he app he lead simply did not work. The problem all came down to a database connection that was being used in multiple threads.

I told him what the problem was. He said, great let’s make a meeting to talk about it. I wasn’t allowed to solve it just yet. I made the meeting. Everyone understood. The lead told me to then make a prototype, but still not allowed to just fix it. I made the prototype. The lead said we needed a meeting to talk about it. Still not allowed to just fix it.

Meanwhile we still get pressured to make the damn app work, the lead keeps saying that none ever bothered to read documentation and that we need to sit down and talk about how we are going to to solve.

This went on for several weeks. When I was finally allowed to solve the issue (not by him), I took only one day.