The Art of Staying Technical (As a Manager)

January 20, 2026

One of the questions I get most often from senior engineers considering management: “How do you stay technical?”

The honest answer: you don’t. Not in the same way.

And that’s okay — but it requires grieving the old version of yourself before you can fully embrace the new one.

What Changes

When I was an IC, I knew our codebase intimately. I could trace a request through every layer, debug obscure race conditions, and make architectural decisions with deep context.

Now? I know the system at a different resolution. I understand the components, the boundaries, the trade-offs. I can ask good questions and spot when something feels off. But I’m not the one who finds the bug at 2am. That’s someone else’s job now — and they’re better at it than I would be, because they’re in it every day.

This is the first adjustment: accepting that your technical depth will necessarily decrease. You’re trading depth for breadth, and that trade-off is the job.

What Matters Now

“Staying technical” as a manager means something different:

1. Understanding enough to have informed opinions

You don’t need to implement the feature, but you need to understand the trade-offs well enough to push back on bad ideas and advocate for good ones. This means reading design docs carefully, asking questions until you actually understand, and occasionally diving into code to verify your mental model.

2. Maintaining credibility with your team

Engineers can tell when their manager doesn’t understand the work. You don’t need to be the best engineer on the team — that’s probably not why you were promoted — but you need to be technically literate enough that your input is valuable, not noise.

3. Making good hiring decisions

Evaluating technical candidates requires staying sharp enough to assess their skills meaningfully. This is one of the best reasons to keep your technical edge: the quality of your team depends on it.

4. Knowing when to go deep

Sometimes the right move is to roll up your sleeves and dig in. A critical bug. An architectural decision that needs more scrutiny. A new technology the team is evaluating. These moments of depth keep you grounded.

What I Actually Do

Practically speaking, here’s how I try to maintain technical fluency:

  • Code review: Not everything, but enough to stay familiar with patterns and spot concerning trends
  • Design docs: I read all of them for my teams, and ask questions until I understand
  • Office hours: I keep time for technical discussions, whether it’s debugging sessions or architecture brainstorms
  • Side projects: Small stuff, mostly. But writing code — any code — keeps the muscle memory alive
  • Continuing education: The NYU program is extreme, but reading papers and taking courses helps you see beyond your current work

The Real Secret

The real secret to staying technical as a manager is this: hire people better than you, and learn from them.

The best engineers I’ve managed have taught me more than any course. They’ve shown me new tools, new patterns, new ways of thinking about problems. My job is to create an environment where they can do great work — and part of how I do that is by staying curious enough to understand what that work actually involves.

I’ll never be the best engineer on my teams again. That’s not the point. The point is to stay close enough to the work that I can help them be their best — and far enough away that I don’t get in their way.

A Final Note

If you’re struggling with this transition, know that it’s normal. Most new managers go through a period of mourning for the work they used to do. The trick is not to cling too tightly.

Your job now is to multiply the impact of others. You can’t do that if you’re trying to also be the best individual contributor. Let go of the old identity. Build the new one.

The technical work you do now is different. It’s in the architecture reviews, the system design, the long-term planning. It’s less satisfying in the short term — no dopamine hit from fixing a bug — but more impactful in the long run.

That’s the trade. Most days, I think it’s worth it.