Many companies have team lead positions that have no formal management authority or responsibilities. Was that perhaps the case here?
The bottom line is some folks in the company do have firing authority -- or at least have broad say in initiating the process to have someone fired. Rarely are these folks not on the management track or its equivalent.
In theory the Team Leader could fire the other devs in the tribe (even senior ones, just not the Tech Leader). In practice it appears that the Tech Leader has a lot of influence in firing a dev. In case of disagreement, the last word, I assume, would be from someone higher up (the CTO).
If a C-level executive officer would be involved in a decision to fire a low-level developer, am I right in assuming the company was quite small? As companies get bigger, firing power and other forms of authority cannot stay concentrated only in the executive suite -- it's just not sustainable or scalable.
It had around 500 people, I believe around 90 developers.
There was a Engineering Manager too, I believe that would be the final word actually.
But see that I am talking about "last word"; if a Team Leader and a Tech Leader disagree in a decision to fire someone. If both of them agrees, it doesn't scale up
The bottom line is some folks in the company do have firing authority -- or at least have broad say in initiating the process to have someone fired. Rarely are these folks not on the management track or its equivalent.