June 22, 2026
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Key takeaways:
- Technical proficiency is no longer optional for engineering managers. It gives you credibility, protects your team’s focus time, and enables sound decisions without pulling engineers away from their work.
- Staying technical requires deliberate investment.
- You don’t need to be the best coder in the room: the goal is to understand what your team is building, why decisions were made, and what’s at stake – not to out-code your engineers.
As an engineering manager you’ve probably felt it: the creeping distance from the technical work your team does every day.
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June 22, 2026
