On the contrary, if you don't code, you risk becoming too detached from the realities of the project. Not only that but you're also left behind in the macro sense of losing touch with the state of the art in general.
Never in a million years would I want to be an engineering manager (tasked to lead a team on a specific project) with no technical contributions to my team's work. The best kinds of contributions are those that are less fun or less critical, but being able to understand how things work and be able to give legitimate concrete feedback on work artifacts fosters the most important thing as a leader: trust. Spend too much time away from making the sausage and you risk letting those terrible words slip from your lips: "why don't we just..." :)
This is worth the trade-off in lost time towards other less critical management tasks (and of course there are critical managenent tasks that will always overrule everything else.)
One hack worth mentioning is that certain large categories of management work are corellated with the number of awake humans on your team, so if you can find a local minimum there that can be coding time with minimal opportunity costs.
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On the contrary, if you don't code, you risk becoming too detached from the realities of the project. Not only that but you're also left behind in the macro sense of losing touch with the state of the art in general.
Never in a million years would I want to be an engineering manager (tasked to lead a team on a specific project) with no technical contributions to my team's work. The best kinds of contributions are those that are less fun or less critical, but being able to understand how things work and be able to give legitimate concrete feedback on work artifacts fosters the most important thing as a leader: trust. Spend too much time away from making the sausage and you risk letting those terrible words slip from your lips: "why don't we just..." :)
This is worth the trade-off in lost time towards other less critical management tasks (and of course there are critical managenent tasks that will always overrule everything else.)
One hack worth mentioning is that certain large categories of management work are corellated with the number of awake humans on your team, so if you can find a local minimum there that can be coding time with minimal opportunity costs.