Who is a code manager?
Before we define the term code manager, let's first discuss my understanding of coder / programmer. A coder is someone who writes most of the code that's being used in their projects from scratch. And when I talk here about writing code, it's the code that actually matter and make that particular project unique. All the bloatware code that has to be added to make things work (like common algorithms for searching and sorting, well known data structures and their associated operations like trie, linked-list etc.) should and must be taken directly from the standard library or somewhere from internet (like StackOverflow, Google, ChatGPT etc.). There is no point in wasting time and re-inventing the wheel.
A Code Manager is someone who always pick and choose code from elsewhere and use them in their project. Don't misunderstand me, it's not an easy job. The decision of where to pick from and what to choose from the picked ones for your project is very critical. You need to look into their complexity (time and space), maintainability aspects, licensing etc. But no matter how much this effort costs, a code manager can't pretend to be a coder. If you haven't invented the wheel even once in your professional career, you can't call your self a coder or for that matter a programmer.
Is code manager a software developer?
Yes. Absolutely Yes.
Anybody who creates and maintains a software product is a software developer. Coders, code managers, debuggers (human ones), code reviewers, code documentation experts, all these are software developers as they directly contribute to software development one way or other. (I am skipping EMs, PMs, PgMs and tons of other designations that we have in management chain as they don't directly contribute to a software development.)
The only thing that differentiate coders from everyone else in this list of software developers, is that others role sooner or later can be fully automated with the help of ever evolving AI making them obsolete. But coders will survive as they have a habit of inventing the wheel which an AI will find hard to replicate.
Are you a code manager?
If you are not certain then most likely you are.
Let me tell you my story. I was happy, proud and satisfied, not with my work but with the overall work-life balanced setup I had when I was a junior developer, who joined this industry fresh out of college. A high paying job doing mostly mundane tasks. Then as I moved up the ladder and got into the senior software developer position, I started trying hard to justify the senior part of my designation. A senior is a person whom a junior looks upto. So, I went down this rabbit hole of finding reasons why anybody would look up to me. I hadn't written a great piece of code (or for that matter any unique piece of code). I was not expert in any coding language. I had not contributed to any open source community. But instead, I had gained a lot of experience in debugging existing code, implementing tiny feature requests from product managers into our large monolith desktop application by borrowing codes from different places. Analysing those code and re-factoring them to fit our needs. What I became good at was managing expectation, setting realistic deadlines with lot of buffers with an expectation that upper management might push back a little on those timelines. And these are not irrelevant skills. These are must have if you want to survive in this non-ideal real world. So, after contemplating a lot, going back and forth, I justified me being a senior developer to myself. But in this process, I also realised that I was never a coder, I was just a code manager.
How to become a coder?
I don't have an answer. I can give you a lot of suggestions and you can find a lot more over the internet. But none of them has worked for me so far. So search over internet, follow tech influencers, do your own due diligence. And see if something works for you.
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