I suspect it’s less a complete review and more an interview of the senior technical manager, to get a sense of whether they are up to par. Do they think about observability, alerting, refactoring, service architecture, etc. reasonably well? Are there issues with how they motivate their teams or when they give them responsibilities? Are timelines challenging but doable?
“Code” is most likely “architecture” and “architecture” is code for “management”.
“Code” is most likely “architecture” and “architecture” is code for “management”.