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> TBH, reading this as a manager, I have to admit I feel like asking my engineers to take on SOME of these beyond-just-the-code duties... is a good thing? Obviously there are a bunch of caveats, and nuances to whether you want an IC engineer to be 100% coding and 0% talking to customers or doing admin (this seems bad), or is it 90% vs 10% (maybe okay), or 80/20 (sweet spot?), 50/50 (concerning), 20/80 (bad again), etc.

1. Agree 100% coding and nothing else is bad most of the time. You can leave out admin tasks but engineering is more than just coding, it's problem solving. Understanding requirements (e.g. by talking to customers) is crucial and also the best code is the code that had to be never written.

2. Think that is also in large part an individual thing, some people like to wear multiple hats to some individually varying degree while others don't.

3. It must work out in practice and you have to make sure the sum of both does not result in a value above 100%

4. I agree if the technical stuff is as low as 20% it may be better to just transfer in another role completely as it is hard to contribute meaningfully there then.




... and 5., try to avoid duties which involve a huge amount of smaller interruptions over the day.




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