I've found that having strong individual contributor skills and having written most of the foundational codebase myself are a dangerous trap as a manager. It's

I've found that having strong individual contributor skills and having written most of the foundational codebase myself are a dangerous trap as a manager. It's very easy to put yourself on the critical path for delivery, which is really bad for your team. You need to build up those skills on the team instead, trust people who you think might not be ready, and be willing to take the heat when they fail. To the extent I still use my IC skillset, it's to fill in the gaps where I don't have a seasoned developer to lean on. I review a lot of patches. That, and I blow off steam by working on non-critical features.