The other day, I came across a post from a proud VP talking about his Director. She leads a team of over 400 engineers and still finds time to code — apparently with 4,000 commits in the past year!
As you can imagine, the comments were buzzing with two very different opinions.
Team A was cheering her on, impressed by her dedication. Team B, on the other hand, wondered if something might be wrong in the company if a Director is doing so much hands-on work.
I don’t know the person in the story, so I can't say what's really going on there. But it made me think of a common question that comes up with some of the people I mentor:
As a manager, should you still be doing hands-on work like coding?
When I say “coding,” I mean any kind of technical work—writing software, analyzing data, building machine learning models, or anything like that.
For many first-time managers who come from technical backgrounds, the shift can be tough. You go from spending your days writing code to barely touching it at all. Coding is often what you love. It feels good because it’s something you know you’re good at, and you can measure your progress with commits, lines of code, or tickets closed.
But management? That’s different. Success is harder to measure. Your days get filled with emails, meetings, and putting out fires. It can feel frustrating.
So, it might seem like a great idea to jump in and help your team by doing some hands-on work. You get to code again, and your team gets help from someone experienced. Win-win, right?
Well, not always.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
You’re still the boss. Even if you forget it, your team won’t. They might not feel comfortable giving you honest feedback about your code.
You might not be as sharp as you used to be. When you’re balancing management and coding, you often don’t have the same focus, and that can lead to mistakes.
You can become a bottleneck. If you’re working on something important but keep getting pulled into other tasks, you might slow your team down. And your team might not feel comfortable telling you that you’re holding things up.
So, what can you do?
Accept that your value is now in leading, not coding.
Step away from coding. Being a “coding manager” often doesn't work well in most companies. Plus, if you’re coding after hours, you risk burning out, which hurts both your technical work and your leadership.
Share your technical knowledge in other ways—like reviewing code, mentoring, or running workshops.
What do you think, fellow managers? Do you still code, or have you stepped back from it?
P.S. For data folks thinking about moving into management—I’ve helped many people make that transition. From the big “why?” to the tricky “how?” — I’m happy to share my experience. Feel free to reach me out via the contact form below!
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