Why a Leader Returns to Coding (Category #Leadership)

On October 1 at 11:00 Moscow time, we will talk live with Nikita Belokopytov (@WhiteNightNiki, LinkedIn) about what happens to an engineering leader when they can once again do a great deal themselves. Nikita has experience in mobile development and engineering leadership—including at Nepos, AutoScout24, and Playrix—and recently joined Bluefish, where he works on Applied AI.

The starting point for the conversation is Nikita’s own posts. In one, he writes that some management layers will no longer be needed and describes his own return to hands-on development. In another, he argues that people remain responsible for the systems that machines design and verify. These claims are worth debating concretely, through specific stories.

We will discuss: - When does an engineer first become responsible for the outcome of an entire product rather than only their own code? - Which management decision affecting other people would Nikita reconsider today? - Why should a leader return to development, and how can they tell when to do a task themselves and when to give it to the team? - How does one real AI process work: who assigns the task to an agent, where is a person needed, and how is the result checked? - Which management tasks truly disappear—and what must an engineer be able to explain without AI before taking responsibility for a change?

We will ask Nikita to separate personal observations from predictions and name the conditions under which his thesis about management does not hold.

Join us if you lead a team and feel drawn back to coding, or if you are deciding where to grow next—into management or back into engineering. And bring your questions.

#CodeOfLeadership #AI4SDLC #Management #Leadership #Engineering #Product