u/Hot_Construction1264

Genuine question for those in data, analytics, or tech-adjacent teams across Aussie enterprise/banks/consulting:

Why is it so common to see Team Leads and Engineering/Analytics Managers appointed who have zero technical background?
In my team, we constantly run into situations where:
-The lead can’t evaluate complexity, so estimates are completely disconnected from reality (either committing to impossible deadlines or panicking over simple fixes).
-Senior devs and analysts spend 40% of their week playing "translator" just to justify standard technical debt, ETL pipeline constraints or why a stakeholder's ad-hoc dashboard request is unsound.
-Career growth and technical mentorship basically don't exist because the lead doesn’t actually understand what good code or solid modelling looks like.

I get the classic corporate defence: "Managers manage people, ICs do the technical work," or "They’re there to manage stakeholder politics so you can build." But when a lead has zero grasp of the fundamentals, they can’t effectively defend the team or push back on absurd requests from non-technical business units.

Is this purely because corporate Australia prioritises smooth talkers over domain competence, or is there a genuine shortage of technical folks willing to step into management?

How do you manage this without burning out from doing half their job for them?

Hi there,

I am having lead responsibilities for over an year but manager doesn't promote me when it comes to compensation.

The responsibilities that I took on was from one step up to my current band. He doesn't have any explanation.

How should I deal with this situation?

Edit : Mid year reviews are all good. I have been leading critical data workstream, client facing calls and audits. Been SME too.

Ooshies are a landfill, Woolies must come up with seed promotion that can help in fighting the inflation with people growing some of their own produce. Stop being selfish Woolies.

I have been with my current company for eight years. Looks like I'm not learning anything new and just doing the same job every day. No new learning coming along the way.

The biggest challenge I'm having is when I look at the outside Market the Skill set required in the job are very different to what I'm currently doing. How can I be job ready for a new company if ever I am made redundant?
What I see is a lot of new people are getting into our company with lower skillets than what currently I have and are you even sitting at higher positions? Why am I not getting permitted that adds to the frustration as well?