"But what does this mean for frontline engineering managers? Is the new normal just about writing more code and doing less of the other things that peacetime managers would normally do?"
"Should they be able to do code reviews? Yes."
There is no standard answer here. At many companies it is the Head Of Product who also oversees the tech team. They may not know how to write code, and will not know how to do code reviews. Some project managers lead engineering teams without knowing how to code. That's especially true outside of the tech industry.
For anyone interested in specific numbers, I interviewed Eric Garside about his experience scaling Freshly from 3 engineers to almost 80 engineers, see here:
"Should they be able to do code reviews? Yes."
There is no standard answer here. At many companies it is the Head Of Product who also oversees the tech team. They may not know how to write code, and will not know how to do code reviews. Some project managers lead engineering teams without knowing how to code. That's especially true outside of the tech industry.
For anyone interested in specific numbers, I interviewed Eric Garside about his experience scaling Freshly from 3 engineers to almost 80 engineers, see here:
https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/eric-garside-as-...
I also surveyed several of the CTOs who I know in New York City, about team size and scale and responsibilities, they gave their answers here:
https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/a-survey-of-ctos...