Settle technical disagreements with facts and principles, not seniority

Google's code review standard states that technical facts and data overrule opinions and personal preferences. Design choices should be judged on underlying engineering principles, and when an author shows several approaches are equally valid, the reviewer should accept the author's preference.

As tech lead, your opinion carries extra weight whether you want it to or not. Use that carefully:

• Ask for data (a benchmark, a prototype, a production metric) when a debate stalls.
• Name the principle behind your view, so people can argue with it.
• Let others win when options are genuinely equal. It builds ownership.

When a decision must be made without full data, make it, write down why, and say what evidence would change it.