At this level, your manager basically becomes your partner, with the same goal of getting the work done most effectively. Your domain is the technical, their's is the human, but there is ton of overlap in the middle
Managers are ultimately responsible for getting tasks that stretch employees abilities, but also in my experience don't have hands on the code. They're usually dealing with politics around team priorities, goals, keeping people motivated, etc.
Managers rely on tech leads to identify work that needs to get done and would be a good fit for the newbie. Tech leads also have to teach newbies best practices, offer advice on designs, etc.
Managers are often technical (e.g. used to be programming daily), but are not actively writing code anymore.
I feel this is a bad situation for tech leads since they have to sort of manage, and do design work, and write code. Kind of a thankless job
I wish! I do not work at FAANG, but I don't think I've had any managers that were that involved in our work. It's mostly a push-it-down-to-the-dev so everything is on the dev's plate at the end of the day. Which is funny, because I always thought the point if the manager was to remove overhead and coordinate the work so the devs can get more done.
1. Take credit for your work.
2. Promise to research something and tell you that you can get more work done because they are "handling it" and then provide no information, so you are saddled with MORE work in addition to what you already had to do.
3. Give direction without understanding anything to feel important.
As you can see, there is some recent trauma here.
They will tell you as little as possible, at the very last minute, when they get bored of you asking for help.
You can literally change a field and if you expect your manager to do anything to help along the way, they won't. When you ask, they won't. When you ask again and highlight real bad behavior, they won't. When the bullying occurs right in front of them, they'll blame you and the other manager and tell you they didn't understand. Do. Not. Stress. Yourself. For. These. Places, dear Reader
For most people in this position the sane advice is GET OUT.
The company plans to leech as much of the value of your experience as possible, and pass it on to cheaper juniors.
Furthermore they will pay you nothing for this (it's an opportunity to "give back"), but they will use you to hook naive juniors for lower pay (an opportunity to "learn from the best").
Basically the company is exploiting you to scam your replacements.
By the time cheaper juniors are able to do what I do they might demand the same salary I demand, or whatever salary I might be able to demand at the time.
Frankly even from a cynical perspective, this doesn't check out. Juniors usually don't try to own the same thing - I'm already there and at any given point could do it better, shared component ownership is rare, plus they'd rather own something new so they can get promoted. Plus juniors move around more. Moreover, while new juniors are relatively easy to replace or outsource, someone with tons of expertise in the area and experience of owning it and working thru others is harder. So, being a large area lead seems more secure than being a junior.
Similarly, if you are not donating blood, the logical conclusion is to become a vampire. :)
If you want to help junior developers, there are many other ways to do that. For example, you could teach a programming course, make a paid video at Udemy, or write a book. If your goal is to help junior developers, skip the intermediary, be more efficient, own the copyright, and set your own working hours.