One of the best engineers I’ve worked with produced very little code at that point in his career. His primary responsibility was to do the research and planning that empowered the rest of the team to move quickly. Without a doubt, that team was far more productive due to his efforts. When needed, he could quickly whip out some top notch code, and he was heavy involved in the code review process. Writing code just wasn’t how he could deliver the most value.

Not anymore.

I found a nice bread knife in a “free box” on the side of the road about 15 years ago. I still use it all the time. Works great.