>>I dont think a manager of software engineers needs to code the application he manages, but he should be continually coding something to remain sharp.
I'd even go to the extreme of saying the coding skills/brains fade by inverse cube law. Skill =~ 1/t^3 (t = time since last practiced the skill). Musicians are known to say something along similar lines, like as little as a day of missed practice and they can feel it.
I used to be quite good at calculus as a teenager, and today I could look at the easiest problems there are and go blank. Only a faint echo of those days remains.
I have long suspected that Doctors suffer similar decline in ability as years go by from Medical school, and you can be sure in as little 2 - 5 years, most managers would struggle to imagine what writing code could look like.
>>I dont think a manager of software engineers needs to code the application he manages, but he should be continually coding something to remain sharp.
I'd even go to the extreme of saying the coding skills/brains fade by inverse cube law. Skill =~ 1/t^3 (t = time since last practiced the skill). Musicians are known to say something along similar lines, like as little as a day of missed practice and they can feel it.
I used to be quite good at calculus as a teenager, and today I could look at the easiest problems there are and go blank. Only a faint echo of those days remains.
I have long suspected that Doctors suffer similar decline in ability as years go by from Medical school, and you can be sure in as little 2 - 5 years, most managers would struggle to imagine what writing code could look like.