There's a dangerous path many engineering leaders walk: the slow drift from builder to administrator. Meetings replace coding. Strategy decks replace pull requests. And before you know it, you've lost touch with the craft that got you here.

Don't let that happen.

Technical leadership requires hands-on involvement. Here are four scenarios where you must engage directly:

When a senior developer leaves. Knowledge gaps appear. Context evaporates. Someone needs to dive in and understand the systems they owned. That someone should be you.

During production incidents. When things break at 2 AM, your team needs a leader who can debug alongside them, not one asking for status updates from the sidelines.

When contextualizing new projects. Understanding the codebase — its patterns, its debt, its dragons — is essential for making informed architectural decisions.

To maintain technical credibility. Your team respects leaders who can still ship. Who understand their struggles because they share them.

Without this involvement, you risk becoming a mere administrator. And administrators don't inspire. They manage.

Stay in the code. Stay relevant. Stay dangerous.