One common refrain that I get from a lot of folks is a quizzical look when I say that I still code and spend 30-40% of my time in the trenches with the engineering team designing and architecting solutions for Fuze.
A lot of times I shrug it off, but I thought I should take out the time today to talk about why I continuing doing something which might go against the grain.
The simple answer to why I still code is that I love the process of coding. It’s art. The process of transforming an idea into an automaton is closest to divinity that I know of. It’s empowering. It’s exhilarating. It’s what gives me joy. Before starting Fuze I wrote a manifesto for what I want to do next, and one of the primary goals was I wanted to have fun. I wanted to wake up to something that excited me daily, and what I do at Fuze excites me daily.
The second, albeit long winded answer is that there is no conventional wisdom on how to build a company. In light of that, you’re free to choose a path you see fit and this is a path that maximises my happiness.
Maybe this is not what all founders do. But spending 30% of my time building systems that scale for a technical company has direct impact on both our topline and bottomline directly maximized shareholder value so I would argue more technical founders should write code daily.</br/>
In fact, with AI there is no excuse not to write code anymore.