How hands-on should I be?

June 22, 2022

It depends. As a leader, your job is not to implement the solution to problems. Your job is to lead the people that actually implement the solution to problems.

Often, your calendar will be messy and you'll have few long streches were you can focus on deep technical work. If you keep picking tasks to implement there are a few negative potential side effects:

  • You become a bottleneck. The team is waiting on you and in the last minute you need to delegate the task. Setting a terrible example.
  • Your solution is terrible, and you haven't built enough trust with the team so they feel safe criticizing your code.
  • You neglect work you should be doing (e.g. managing dependencies for next quarter or recruiting)
  • The team feels like you don't trust them.
  • You end up getting a lot of the challenging/fun work and your team resents you for it.

Try to understand why you think it is important for you to work on said ticket.

There is no recipe, but a mostly safe way to do this is to prefer pairing with someone else in the team. This way you get some practice and you can help someone else in the team grow with you.

Technology evolves fast, it is a good idea to set time every week to explore and understand new technology. Depending on your context, this time won't be directed at your team's backlog.