[ido]

I personally find it to become the case with as little as 5-6 developers under me (assuming they are good and I can trust them to program without needing me to step in and solve their problems of their own making on a regular basis).

Also as someone nearing his late 30s I'm sometimes surprised how good some programmers are as young as late teens/early 20s! These rare talents mostly need me to prevent them from going into rabbit holes but when they are pointing in the right direction can produce amazing results.

I am sure my time is better spent helping a few of these do better than what I'd get from just myself programming directly in the same amount of time (management is a multiplier on the team's productivity and that multiplier can easily get smaller than 1.0).

[water8]

Managing a team is just like managing threads. Keep them as autonomous and lock-free as possible

[Schwolop]

I like this. Hadn't heard it before, but it's succinct and as it happens, I agree!