A tech manager's superpower

An often overlooked superpower a manager can have is the ability to code. Being a code-first manager has given me leverage in ways that are hard to overstate, regardless of whether I am talking to devs, sr devs, other leaders or stakeholders. 

It’s not about writing features alongside the team or micromanaging pull requests. It’s more about walking into estimation sessions or design discussions and actually speaking the same language. It's about asking "Why?" when it really matters. 

When you understand the code:

• Estimation discussions start becoming informed conversations.

• Design/implementation debates move faster because you can see trade-offs clearly.

• Your team trusts that you grasp the complexity behind “just a small change.”

• The team spends less time justifying and more time building.

A tech manager's superpower

Of course, coding as a manager isn’t mandatory, and plenty of great leaders don’t. But this skill is an amplifier imo. It turns leadership from being directional to being contextual. And in my experience, that creates outsized outcomes. What is even more amazing is that often sprint tasks become micro team building exercises.