How do tech leads keep their hands dirty?
With my career progressing to leadership roles, I don’t like the idea of being completely hands-off with development. The edge I’ve built comes from my combination of soft and hard skills, and with how fast technology moves, letting my technical skills atrophy isn’t an option.
But I’ve been learning the hard way that trying to be responsible for development (which often leads to tech-support follow-ups) while also managing multiple projects is detrimental to my ability to lead , not to mention that I'm pretty sure I was on my way to an ulcer.
I’m thinking the right balance may be to schedule hands-on weeks. Periodically step out of leadership mode and dive into a project where I can get my hands dirty again. Curious how other developers / tech leads have handled this. Do you deliberately block out time to go heads down?
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Revision- A few people have pointed out my rather optimistic plan to disappear for a week periodically. No, I don't recall the last time in my career where I could do that with any regularity. Jumping in on projects when the consulting tide is ebbing seems more feasible, or leaving myself an out of transitioning a project to another developer if I find myself overloaded.
Jessie Grenfell
Jessie has spent 20+ years architecting and delivering software for organizations where complexity is the norm — financial services, insurance, nonprofits, and regulated industries where getting it wrong isn't an option. She specializes in the hard problems: unique operational workflows, cross-system integrations, and the kind of compliance requirements (HIPAA, CCPA, SOC 2) that most developers treat as someone else's job.
At Codality, she leads every principal engagement from discovery through delivery — because she's seen what happens when that thread gets cut.