[lnkmails]

I think this is a sensible advice and the one I personally follow. I manage around 10 people and as much as I love to write code and be involved in everyday engineering, the real success measure for me is to see everyone succeeding in the team. This requires a personal sacrifice and picking left overs which aren't in the critical path. Initially, I tried to over compensate by putting more stricter requirements on writing code equal to doing people management but when I got more people, it just turned out exponentially harder. If you aren't able to make this sacrifice in a few months time, you should reevaluate and maybe take a different role. You'd do yourself and your team injustice if you focused more on yourself than the team.

[fictorial]

I agree with you and GP in that I'd gladly take on less coding and focus on delegation and mentoring which I'm finding I really like. However, it seems the founders see me sort of as superman of all things tech. This means, that I'm stuck for now in both worlds. It's a bit claustrophobic but I feel that many people must be in this boat with me.

[cimmanom]

You need to explain this to your founders and get them on board.