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I was CTO at a company and ended up managing a team of just under 20 developers and although I didn't feel the same way as you do right now, I did absolutely feel that my technical skills were becoming increasingly rusty. The Javascript revolution passed me by, Typescript was a mystery to me, all sorts of interesting things were happening in the cloud and I just wasn't hands-on with any of it. Although my management and business skills were continuing to improve (and, I think, got to be quite strong), the loss of my technical competence did bother me. I ended up leaving and now I'm working as a CTO but with no team - more of an individual contributor, at a senior level in the company. I write code every day and over the past year my technical skills have mostly returned, and I've gotten to learn all sorts of exciting new stuff. With that said, one of the biggest things I've learned is that, once you know how to write software, it's not that hard to get back into it. Learning Typescript has been straightforward. VS Code is a joy to use, but hey, Xcode was pretty great too. If having strong technical skills is important to you, then you have to change your focus and get back into it. But know that you can do this any time you want. On the other hand, if you value the skills of people management, reporting to a board, managing investments, etc., those are things that are hard AND valuable. At the end of the day it's just about choices, you can't be great at everything. Good luck! |