I'm not sure it's so absurd. There's always unexpected tasks that show up which can throw off a schedule. Or sick leave, vacation, etc. Things happen. I've wor

I'm not sure it's so absurd. There's always unexpected tasks that show up which can throw off a schedule. Or sick leave, vacation, etc. Things happen. I've worked as a TL on several teams before where we didn't assign any implementation work to me specifically, but I was there to jump in and help paddle the boat when folks got stuck. This worked great, because usually the sticky places were integration points between subsystems, which can be especially tough for junior engineers to navigate. As someone with the big picture I could jump in and save them tons of time. In the meantime, if I had spare cycles I'd work on tooling, test automation (and especially stubbing out and deflaking integration tests). Projects where I did this tended to have fewer bugs and hit their deadlines.