Your additional information doesn't add anything significant enough to warrant creating a new question. If I were an answerer, I would challenge your assertions that the technical lead is more skilled than the new hire. That is your assessment, which is likely to be biased, particularly if you are the team lead. Clearly management somehow values the new hire more than the previous, otherwise there wouldn't be the disparity.

Part of the problem with hypothetical questions is that without a real situation to act as context, you can always respond to any answer with "But what if that's not the case? What then?" At a certain point, the only possible answer is "We can't read minds - you should ask management why they did what they did."

If you want to improve your question, you would be better off just asking about what your actual situation is, rather than using vague hypotheticals. Are you the team lead and you worry that management doesn't value you anymore? Are you one of the team members and are trying to figure out how to deal with a power struggle between the lead and the new hire? Are you a manager and are trying to determine if it's acceptable to bring in a new person at a higher level? Tell us what your real problem is instead of making us try to guess.

Your additional information doesn't add anything significant enough to warrant creating a new question. If I were an answerer, I would challenge your assertions that the technical lead is more skilled than the new hire. That is your assessment, which is likely to be biased, particularly if you are the team lead. Clearly management somehow values the new hire more than the previous, otherwise there wouldn't be the disparity.

Part of the problem with hypothetical questions is that without a real situation to act as context, you can always respond to any answer with "But what if that's not the case? What then?" At a certain point, the only possible answer is "We can't read minds - you should ask management why they did what they did."

If you want to improve your question, you would be better off just asking about what your actual situation is, rather than using vague hypotheticals. Are you the team lead and you want to know how to approach management about feeling undervalued? Are you one of the team members and are trying to figure out how to deal with a power struggle between the lead and the new hire? Are you a manager and are trying to determine if it's acceptable to bring in a new person at a higher level than your team lead? Tell us what your real problem is instead of making us try to guess.