Should Engineering Managers Code ?

Should Engineering Managers Code?

I would vote for NO AT ALL in the beginning and depends later once you create the relationships with team

Here is why

➤ Bottleneck in the team
Your team shouldn't rely on you to reviews/approved in any code review/merge and deployments, they would need to have your management approval support , and not operation process approvals.

➤ Your focus should be on people
I Should focus on more strategy and sometimes design decision based on trade-offs and require your attentions, and also people developments skills and capability growths.

➤ You are not closer to the technical works that team are doing
Trust your team to handle , and perhaps sometime require your advices other viewpoints

➤ You are not building trust with the team
Once you in part of the team , you unable to perform independent views , and may have bias on decision and works unconsciously

Your job is to lead, not deliver code.