I’m an Engineering Manager who can’t code
Why Developer Managers Should Be Technical — And What Happens When We Aren’t
Published in
6 min readDec 10, 2021
Should an Engineering Manager be technical?
I manage 16 developers — and in my current role I am responsible for enterprise data warehouses for analytics. That said:
- I have never written code in any meaningful way
- My background is agile Technical Project/Program Management
But am I technical? I tell people no.
Why? Because people often use “ technical” to communicate:
- This person has had a hands-on engineering role
- This person can provide meaningful technical feedback to experts
- This person has direct experience in the work they are overseeing
But what does being “technical” mean?
Will Larson wrote an exceptional article, Do Engineering Managers Need to be Technical? He writes about the challenges of defining the word “technical.”
He created a simple framework of questions to address concerns if a person might not be technical enough for a role:
- Is there a relevant/critical technology that they are not familiar with?
