Comment by zikzak

I tend to agree here. I haven't been allowed to code for a few years now but I spend a lot of my time talking through code with developers. I find many of the people on my teams lack a perspective I can provide to frame a problem or evaluate an approach.

I also help them get to the heart of problems quickly simply because I'm not stuck in the code all day. For example, if I see a developer taking too long to identify the source of a bug, I'll get on a call and get them to take me through that code and get them prove any assumption ("ok, show me the code that checks that value is greater than zero").

By doing this I'm using my coding experience directly without actually coding. I'd consider coding a huge waste of time for me, but spending 30 minutes to unstick a developer when I am sure they should have found the problem by now seems like a really good use of my time.

It also lets people know they can't just spend three days on something that should take a couple hours without someone checking in, which I don't live having to do but it's a reality for some teams I work with.