How do you balance hands-on coding with your leadership duties?

Question

Accepted Answer

The hardest adjustment for a new TL is that **you can no longer code at full IC capacity**. Leadership work, reviews, unblocking, planning, communication, eats into focus time. The goal is not to stop coding but to code *strategically* on the things only you should do.

## How to choose what to code

```text
DO code:                          DELEGATE / avoid:
- Risky architectural spikes       - The most fun/interesting feature
- Critical-path blockers           - Work a teammate could grow from
- Glue work nobody owns            - Anything on the critical path you'd block
- Reviews and pairing              - Large solo efforts that hide you for weeks
```

## A concrete example

Don't assign yourself the headline feature, you'll become a bottleneck and starve your team of growth. Instead, take the gnarly auth refactor that needs senior judgment, and pair with a junior on it so they level up.

## A useful guardrail

Protect a few hours of deep work, but never put yourself on the critical path. If the release depends on *your* code landing, your leadership duties will constantly pull you away and you'll block everyone.

## Why it matters

A TL who codes too much stops leading: reviews pile up, people get blocked, direction drifts.

A TL who codes too little loses technical credibility and context.

The art is staying close enough to the code to lead it, without becoming the bottleneck.