It would have never got to this point if he had just done his work, yes he is entitled to leave, but his general work ethic and attitude during the project life cycle has been poor.

@bobo2000 If the problem is genuinely just performance related with him not doing the work he should be, then there should be a procedure in place for dealing with underperforming employees that you can follow. Just bear in mind that if he's given good, valid reasons why he can't do what you're asking him to and you escalate this to management, you could come off worse than he does - especially as a new employee.

This a thousand times yes! The FIRST discussion you should have had about overtime is with the tech lead, "Hey, TL. We're running behind on this project and we need to catch up. I'm wanting to ask for overtime, or maybe picking up a contractor or two. What do you think?" - Make him OWN the solution.

@bobo2000 - you don't provide enough information to say his attitude is poor. A lot of PM's don't give development teams enough information to actually get their jobs done. Sounds to me more you have a platform to complain about him yet we don't know the details of his end of it.

@JonH 1) Going on annual leave without notifying me or offering to support me to find cover as a tech lead 2) Not following clear instructions by using the project tracking tools for the benefit of the whole team 3) Always being 'busy' whenever I need to ask technical questions to the point that I have gone to another member of the dev team for that info 4) Not doing the work in a timely manner then complaining once I put pressure on the team to get the work done from it not being done, and on and on.

@bobo2000 Whose definition of "a timely manner" are you using? Yours or the development team's? Because one of the biggest problems in project management is PMs who think they should dictate what the development schedule should be instead of working with their development experts. That's the point of this answer: all of your complaints may be valid, but it's hard to be sure from the information we have. He's suggesting that you evaluate your own position objectively before assuming you're not part of the problem. People are bad at communicating on both sides, and being new makes it harder.

This comment ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ is the prime answer.

The guy has been the "lead" for a reason. I think you are not getting along with this team lead because he is feeling that you are not appreciating him enough. He must be very competent to be in the lead position and he probably has been working in that company for along time. You need to consider his seniority when you are dealing with him. I find it very difficult to believe that he is a low performance employee and yet is promoted to lead position. I am guessing that you have not gained his respect and his trust and that's the root of the problems between you too.

The development teams, not mine.

blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2012/04/20/… and codingjourneyman.com/2014/10/06/the-clean-coder-estimation are recommended reading for holding developers to a single date they have estimated

@exussum explain to that senior management, at the end of the day work needs to be delivered. If it isn't, it will eventually be my head for not delivering....you understand that right? Also, going on annual leave when you are not producing is ridiculous.

I do understand that, but that is your job. Things go wrong. Estimate ranges / probabilities is much better it gives everyone a much clearer image of how long something will take. Things never go 100% as expected. Communicate with both sides (senior management and developers). Over time the estimations will be more accurate.

@bobo2000 - I'm not sure what the locale is in your case. In some locales, going on annual leave is never ridiculous, it's a right. You might want to have some long discussions with your manager before this gets too far out of hand. You need to understand what tools you have at your disposal to either encourage compliance or force compliance to your schedule.

@JoeStrazzere he lives and hires in the UK, where 28 days fte is the law.

OP should read this answer and understand he is the problem, not the tech lead. From my experience I'd say the tech lead is probably seriously overworked - all the signs are there, including his getting a new PM with a dictatorial and entitled attitude. Keep pushing him and he'll leave and your project is sunk. Leaders who want success do not dump all over their team, they help them. The OP is more concerned with blaming others and protecting himself than anything else.

@StephenG - I think your psychic management skills are well-tuned, here. bobo2000 may have inherited a bad situation, but it's his job to clean it up. You don't do that by alienating and denigrating the only people who can help you. The employee who's helping him is probably going to end up the next target.

@wesleylong Indeed. We have to wonder if the OP's predecessor left a mess behind. Perhaps the debacle with the leave issue indicates that there was no proper handover of schedule to the OP - a bad situation for a rookie PM to be dumped into. Definitely don't take that out on the team - they may already have had a really tough time before he came.

Stephen if he is overworked then be transparent about it to senior management rather than be a project risk. I actually told FYI senior management that I was concerned that he was and we may need multiple tech leads to distribute the load. I still have to run this project and expected to deliver it on the deadline. Everytime I miss it due to resourcing issues its reflects badly onto me.

That's the job. If it can't be done you need to communicate that to the people above you and maybe try to cut the scope. I realise you're stressed but stressing your team out will make things worse, not better. You may have been put in an impossible position but your team can only do so much. If the deadline and scope are unreasonable, they're unreasonable blaming your team wont change that.

@bobo2000 "1) Going on annual leave without notifying me or offering to support me to find cover as a tech lead" I think it has been risen a few times in answers and comments that timing matters but I don't think you provided any answers. Anyway - what if he wasn't going on annual leave but was hit by a bus or turn a two week notice? You would be in similar situation and team should be prepared for such situation (if it's your third day you probably couldn't do much... but than the leave was probably discussed way ahead of your hire).

"3) Always being 'busy' whenever I need to ask technical questions to the point that I have gone to another member of the dev team for that info" - total success on his part there. Expect him to keep doing this for as long as it works, because from his viewpoint, this is the ideal outcome. "@exussum explain to that senior management, at the end of the day work needs to be delivered. If it isn't, it will eventually be my head for not delivering....you understand that right?" - 'beatings will continue until delivery happens on my terms'

To me, it is obvious that the lead lost status/authority from before the OP got there; and it does seem that the lead is going out of his way to make things more difficult. Ultimately the PM is responsible. So what I recommend is pulling the lead aside and talking it out. Once in a similar situation, I unassigned ALL tasks and made it clear that his job was to focus on a single task — working out the planning documents. If your lead refuses an assignment (to meet), then HR and writeup.