We, managers, are back to coding! Is this a good thing?

One of the biggest stories I have been hearing recently is that many engineering managers are back to coding, because of AI.

AI is helping in two ways:

• 🧠 𝗜𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 — managers often retain good taste for what good code looks like, but are a bit rusty on implementation details. AI makes the latter less relevant.

• 🗓️ 𝗜𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘀 — by letting terminal agents run while people are on meetings or doing something else.

Is this a good thing? A reader told me "Managers need to focus on the things that only they can do, rather than the things that anyone on their team can do."

This is not wrong, but I also think many managers end up completely detached from how their team works, and spending some time coding can help a lot.

The benefit here is not about throughput, but about empathy and staying in touch with what the DX and the whole process looks like.

This is most definitely good and I would love to see more of it.

Have a good week! ☀️