Comment by JojoFatsani

This. You’re the boss, would you let your grade school kid keep talking back to you like this? You are the authority figure here. I seriously doubt he will begin to treat you any differently unless he has some fear put in him (and a slim chance even if that happens)

I would suggest that to come out on top here that you need to pitch a perfect game from here on out, even if it means following some suggestion from this guy or something. Being correct and being willing to verbalize when you don’t know something or don’t know the ideal answer to a situation is the number one trick to establishing a reputation as a rockstar IMO. That may give you a lot of sway.

Keep a great paper trail both on this guy and to cover your own ass.

I would probably begin building a case to fire him, aka “managing him out”.

I would start by documenting every incident and every fuckup by this guy in detail with links to tickets, slack and commits related to problems he has caused. Meeting notes about his poor professionalism could be used against him. You need that evidence, once you have a pretty good book on him, 5-10 incidents, especially with production downtime or company revenue ramifications, and you will have a good base with which to PIP him.

Make life as uncomfortable for him as possible while remaining professional. What’s the worst thing that happens, he quits? As long as you document the shit out of everything he does wrong, your ass is covered.

Best of luck, I can’t stand obnoxious people at work so I hope you can get him his comeuppance.

I hate this bullshit employee. But, in reading the post, I was not sure the OP was "the boss" as he stated he was "team lead" [Then I joined as the lead. I helped to stabilize the team over the last year. It’s grown from four to ten engineers. Three engineers joined specifically to work with me.] So, that's why I advised to better understand what is going on. I've been a "powerless" team lead more than once, and if you are not doing reviews and if the "manager" is not actively involved in making the team better but using input to perform a review, then its really frustrating. So, either he has the levers to fix the problem or he needs to go to his manager and figure out what levers there are to fix this.