I think traditionally, a lot of manager coding has fallen into this bucket of optically useful with somewhat dubious long-term value. Doing high quality work simply requires too complete a mental model for folks jumping in and out of writing software.
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Getting more hands-on with a codebase rarely seems like the “right” decision in terms of time usage in these kinds of roles. And doing so thoughtlessly is almost always a net negative. You have a poor understanding of the code, you lack the time to follow through on the work in production, and you create needless dependencies. Thankfully, onboarding to new code bases is way easier than it’s ever been.
I’m excited to get back into more direct contributions in my next role.