This article is pretty on point with my experience. I'm a "senior technical" manager (of about 60 engineers) and with that comes a ton of responsibility that pulls me away from coding at every turn. I have to be in every call, I have to know everything that's going on and I have to be able to be able to communicate all of this in ways that advocate for the team but also navigate the politics of the organization.
All that said, I often get criticism that I should not be picking up coding tasks every sprint. There seems to be some unwritten rule that remaining a coder is a net negative when you start tickling the upper management ranks. On the one hand I'm told that I need to train the other managers to be more like me and then on the other hand I'm told that I code too much, I'm going to burn out and need to find ways have others do the work.
I personally think being able to do all kinds of coding tasks (prototyping, bug fixes, major time sensitive features, etc) does a lot for me as a manager... the team respects me, I stay close to the code so I can speak about it as well as anyone can and I can contribute to just about anything if the need arises. If I ever get promoted to Director level then I probably will have to step away from coding as an official duty, but I'll happily keep enjoying that part of my job for now.
All that said, I often get criticism that I should not be picking up coding tasks every sprint. There seems to be some unwritten rule that remaining a coder is a net negative when you start tickling the upper management ranks. On the one hand I'm told that I need to train the other managers to be more like me and then on the other hand I'm told that I code too much, I'm going to burn out and need to find ways have others do the work.
I personally think being able to do all kinds of coding tasks (prototyping, bug fixes, major time sensitive features, etc) does a lot for me as a manager... the team respects me, I stay close to the code so I can speak about it as well as anyone can and I can contribute to just about anything if the need arises. If I ever get promoted to Director level then I probably will have to step away from coding as an official duty, but I'll happily keep enjoying that part of my job for now.