My tech lead is an idiot

This is called "politics", which is basically playing the human relationship game (vs technical merit).

Your options are to play it (to varying degrees) or to move to a place where there's less of it. But make no mistake, there's always some of it; the person who talks to a lot of people and make connections and is likeable will have an advantage (maybe rightfully so).

You don't need to be extroverted to play the game, just takes practice like everything else.

Any time you are thinking it is time to change jobs, it is past time to change jobs.

As a hiring manager, if a candidate says something bad about a previous colleague how can that be judged in a vacuum? If somehow the HM were omniscient, there are two possibilities: either they deem the candidates' conclusion as justified or not. Bias aside, that's a 50% chance that you're making yourself look like an idiot instead of the person you're bad-mouthing. Even if you dodge that bullet, what's the upside? You have a justifiable reason for leaving your last job—that's it—but the interviewer is also wondering if you're going to be bad-mouthing the first person you disagree with on the job.

You can still be honest without getting personal: say that you felt your work wasn't recognized or growth opportunities were lacking, etc. Those could be red flags too, but they at least give the interviewer some signal on your personality/expectations without conflating overtly negative interpersonal issues which really can only make you look bad.

First, whatever you may feel about your tech lead -- don't let it get out to prospective teams. Complaining about people in a previous team will look bad on you. (Even if it's not your fault, that's how interviewers may perceive you.)

Second, you have my sympathy. I was in a team where I was doing a lot of the technical work and leadership. The TL didn't come up with designs, didn't mentor anyone, and talked behind other engineer's backs. I have no problem with the fact that he didn't write much code, but it was very frustrating that he couldn't explain to me why he disagreed with my designs. In one instance, I had met with the TL multiple times to make sure he and I were on the same page, held several team-wide design reviews in the previous month where the TL attended, and got approval from all the other engineers on the team to begin my work. My manager's feedback to me was, 1) it was my responsibility to make the TL understand and 2) I needed to work on "buying consensus" with the team. To say the least, I started looking for a job with better career opportunities.

I wasn't the only person who felt the way I did; the person who took my place after I left the team felt the same way. I later found out that the TL got promoted (for what, I have no idea, but it's probably because he played the politics well).

This stuff happens.

You can't do much about fixing your team situation, but you can certainly look to move to another team where there are better opportunities to grow and be noticed. Also, take some time to observe how he plays politics. Some of it you might agree with (and it may be useful to you in the future), and some of it you might not agree with. My TL was very good at praising people he perceived as higher ranking than him, and he would somehow talk to them in such a way that they would basically spell out designs for him, so he was "never wrong" about how he did things. You'll find that the higher you go up, it's not just about your technical abilities anymore, but how you convince people about the right decisions to make.

It's been commented by others, but I just wanted to chime in that when I was a tech lead I was _very_ happy if I could close one ticket a week. It took me a while to accept just how much I had to delegate because while I _knew_ how to solve the problems faster and better than most of the people on my team (i had more experience with the product and more experience writing software) I simply couldn't productively contribute to the codebase _and_ do my job as a tech lead, which was _mostly_ answering questions and making decisions about how to proceed all day.

I'm not saying your lead isn't an idiot. I just wanted to give another viewpoint on why "tickets closed" is a terrible metric to apply to a tech lead. If you're fixing tons of bugs and closing lots of tickets you're probably not tech leading as much as you think you are.

Being tech lead isn't about being a productive coder or being the _best_ coder. It's not even about knowing more about coding than the others on your team. It's about eliminating the technical roadblocks for your team by answering questions helpfully and making good decisions about the direction to move the codebase, and having meetings and discussions about the future of the codebase. All of that takes a ton of time.