I’m not a manager but I’ve observed managers stay technically strong by being involved in technical activities. Participate in design reviews, project planning, on-call issues etc. being able to smell good vs bad system design does not change that fast. Also they’ll occasionally bust out a ticket that only takes a few hours, aka still able to commit code. I don’t think this is unreasonable for edge level managers. I even get good insight from managers at the director/vp level at where I work.
