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Discussion on: When Is the Perfect Time to Move on as a Developer?

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Bret Williams

I found myself pushed into management by my company and slowly over 10 years my technical skills rusted and I became slow and sloppy coding. Recently, let's say 2 years ago, I picked up a Swift book and taught myself how to make iOS apps and games and it was incredibly inspiring and fun.

I'm curious what advice developers have for managers who manage development teams so that they can stay technical. I study on my own time on the weekends and tinker with Swift but I feel like when I leave this job I'll have to go to a bootcamp to get up to speed again. I've looked at job postings for managers and surprisingly most of them require you to be a super star coder as well as a fabulous project manager and people person.

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Alex Fedorov

Hey, Bret!

You are not alone! Most of the engineering managers who I know (and who are good people managers) miss coding.

A simple solution would be some retreat once in a while, where you get together with other developers (or engineering managers with the same problem), and code away, or hack something up. This could be a hackathon or coding-dojo/coderetreat format—these are extremely fun!

You can organize such events internally in your company, join/hold community ones, and even probably go to conferences where there are such full-day activities.

I have even more thoughts and ideas about this and how this can be done. If you are interested in chatting about it (in person or video call), drop me a line via alex [at] foundsiders [dot] com!

Best,
Alex