[johnfn]

Do you think that all managers and tech leads atrophy because they don’t spend all day “doing”? I think a good number of them become more effective because they delegate the simple parts of their work that don’t require deep thought, leaving them to continue to think hard about the thorniest areas of what they’re working on.

Or perhaps you’re asking how people will become good at delegation without doing? I don’t know — have you been “doing” multiple years of assembly? If not, how are you any good at Python (or whatever language you currently use?). Probably you’d say you don’t need to think about assembly because it has been abstracted away from you. I think AI operates similarly by changing the level of abstraction you can think at.

[discreteevent]

> Do you think that all managers and tech leads atrophy because they don’t spend all day “doing”?

People have argued for years that software architects must write code.

Regarding your second paragraph: When you write python you then debug it at the level of the abstraction. You never debug the python interpreter. You can try to treat AI like an abstraction but it immediately breaks down as soon as you go to debug. It would only be a complete abstraction if you never had to deal with the generated code.

[Bukhmanizer]

> Do you think that all managers and tech leads atrophy because they don’t spend all day “doing”?

Yes? If not 100% then a number pretty close to that. Definitely 100% of all the managers/non-coding leads I’ve worked with

[bloomca]

Managers 100% lose their abilities, their focus shifts to completely different concerns -- codebase health, enabling people, tracking velocity metrics, etc. They still understand high-level concerns, of course (if we are talking about strong technical background), but they'd struggle a lot if just dropped into the codebase.

Tech leads can exist in many variants, but usually they spend the majority of time in code, so they don't lose it. If they become too good at managing and change their priorities, they _will_ gradually drift away too.

[sensanaty]

As an IC turned temporary manager that went back to being IC, yes, absolutely my skills atrophied. This isn't even a programming thing, this is just a regular human thing with most, arguably all, things that you don't practice for a while.

Also I find the idea that most managers or technical leads are doing any kind of "deep thought" hilarious, but that's just maybe my apathy towards management speaking.

[n8cpdx]

I hear all the time from people who have moved into management that their engineering skills atrophy. The only antidote is to continue doing IC work while managing.

[bluefirebrand]

> Do you think that all managers and tech leads atrophy because they don’t spend all day “doing"

Yes, obviously this happens.

Do you seriously think that skills don't rust when you stop using them daily?