I've heard the phrase, "We don't need a tech lead", from a number of engineers in my career. My response to this 👇

Firstly, it almost always sounds like "We don't need a *stinkin'* tech lead", which isn't very helpful

When I ask why don't need a tech lead, I'm offered examples which sound reasonable such as, "We are senior engineers and can solve problems," or "We don't need to be told what to do," or, "We're an agile team."

Their answers seem to indicate that either they don't fully understand what a tech lead does, or they give examples of bad tech leads

If I had a bad tech lead, maybe no tech lead would be better too 😅