You are right about team size, but in many companies, the "dev manager" is certainly not hands on, even with small teams. The last team I was on, the "dev manag

You are right about team size, but in many companies, the "dev manager" is certainly not hands on, even with small teams. The last team I was on, the "dev manager" never even set up his development environment. He always claimed he wanted to get more involved, but probably had too many other priorities. If you are managing a team of 4, not making any technical decisions, not writing any code either, in my opinion, it is a bad sign. You are too out of touch. Hands on is necessary with small teams. In those environments, all the technical work and decisions are delegated to a tech lead / staff / principal eng. The "dev manager" is there for people management and high level sprint planning. Planning can be done with very little technical knowledge since the team itself does the sizing and scoping. Obviously not every company is the same, but that was my experience at a mid-size SV tech company.