[fhd2]

As a CTO for a good decade now (mid sized and small companies), I agree. At my previous (big-ish) company I maneuvered myself into a position where, before I left, I largely had to make business decisions and build bridges based on what my engineers told me - that either creates an incidental consensus culture (which the company might not want), or the most persuasive engineer is the de facto CTO. Being able to make up your own mind (and detect BS - our industry is full of it) seems crucial to me for technical leadership.

Nobody says you need to be the best or come up with any solutions yourself, but I do believe it's important to know what's _actually_ going on. What I ended up with is to spend roughly 50% of my time with the code base and fellow developers. People management, hiring and all the other misc management topics are important too, but they can easily consume all of your work time and then some if you don't timebox them (forcing you to delegate), in my experience.