I am having a hard time understanding what you are saying, perhaps you could restate? Coding is not a soft skill, even if that is in a capacity where it's used

I am having a hard time understanding what you are saying, perhaps you could restate? Coding is not a soft skill, even if that is in a capacity where it's used ancillary to other tasks such as the ones you mentioned. I am glad you mentioned it, because communication and trust, on the flip side, are soft skills. You can foster trust through excellent communication and understanding Where the engineering manager does not excel in a particular area of expertise, he or she will defer to the ones that do. A good engineering manager knows their weaknesses, and how to ask for help. The good engineering manager will seek to gather understanding of the technical debts and use that to represent the coding team well. Again communicating those decisions effectively are orthogonal to that process (meaning you can communicate a poor decision effectively just as well as communicating a good decision effectively)