I recently quit a job where I was in practice the tech lead. I did probably 60% code reviews, and made sure the architecture as a whole kept moving towards a coherent view and quality. But it was boring as I don't particularly enjoy teaching new developers basics of coding production ready systems every few months, especially when tied down as a consultant for a government organization. I ultimately had very little to say in what tech we could deploy. I therefore decided to go somewhere I might get more freedom to build quality with a bit less politics.

I'm currently working for a company where the our manager holds a tight grip against the code we write, but he doesn't seem to guide us in the correct direction.