This is accurate at big companies, but I think too much time doing other work and too little time doing core technical work is a sign of immature leadership. Jo

This is accurate at big companies, but I think too much time doing other work and too little time doing core technical work is a sign of immature leadership. Joel Spolsky wrote in one of his blogs that a manager's job is to move obstacles out of the way so that employees can get stuff done. I think generally the longer you can keep your developers coding, the better off you will be.