This is ridiculous.
Yes, engineering managers absolutely should understand how to code, and understanding concepts like technical debt, unreliability of estimation, etc. goes without saying. And it's awesome for a manager to be familiar enough with the tools and work to be able to implement a quick critical bugfix or similar when unexpectedly necessary.
But if they're a good manager, it's far better for the organization for them to be spending their full time managing. Let coders code and managers manage, as long as they're both good at their jobs. The author's argument makes as much sense as saying a professional baseball coach should be spending 30% of his game time actually playing with his team.
And honestly, this is just BS:
> Once a person stops coding for a significant portion of time, critical connections to the concerns of developers atrophy.
Citation needed. It sounds as fake as supposed facts like we only use 10 percent of our brains, or other hogwash.
Yes, engineering managers absolutely should understand how to code, and understanding concepts like technical debt, unreliability of estimation, etc. goes without saying. And it's awesome for a manager to be familiar enough with the tools and work to be able to implement a quick critical bugfix or similar when unexpectedly necessary.
But if they're a good manager, it's far better for the organization for them to be spending their full time managing. Let coders code and managers manage, as long as they're both good at their jobs. The author's argument makes as much sense as saying a professional baseball coach should be spending 30% of his game time actually playing with his team.
And honestly, this is just BS:
> Once a person stops coding for a significant portion of time, critical connections to the concerns of developers atrophy.
Citation needed. It sounds as fake as supposed facts like we only use 10 percent of our brains, or other hogwash.