In a non-broken organization technical leads (or equivalent) have same level of authority to guide development as feature driven personnel and the necessity of features vs. quality can be triaged in bright daylight.
If the organization is not sane, that's another thing of course (and often the case, sadly).
There are several in the Helsinki area (that I'm aware of - that have been at some point at least - sane in this regard. Many broken of course as well).
If the organization is not sane, that's another thing of course (and often the case, sadly).