Leadership by Proximity: Why Being ‘Close to the Code’ is Bad

A Masterclass in Micromanaging Your Way to Mediocrity

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Leadership is a tricky business. You want to stay involved, remain informed and appear helpful. So what’s the solution? Hovering over your team, reviewing every pull request and questioning every decision. After all, the closer you are to the code, the better the product… right?

Wrong.

Welcome to Leadership by Proximity, where leaders can’t let go of their developer glory days and insist on being “hands-on”, not because it helps but because trusting your team is apparently too risky. If you’ve ever wondered how to completely kill team morale, stifle growth and slow down delivery while believing you’re being an “involved leader,” buckle up.

Let’s explore why being “close to the code” doesn’t make you a great leader and what you’re missing out on while micromanaging everyone to oblivion.

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1. Your Team Doesn’t Need a ‘Backseat Developer’

Here’s the truth: You were probably a great developer back in the day. Maybe you optimized queries, built clean abstractions, or wrote code so beautiful it deserved to hang in the Louvre. But now? Your job isn’t to code. It’s to lead.

Hovering over your team like a backseat driver (“Why’d you use that approach? Have you thought about doing X?”) doesn’t help. It just frustrates. Your team didn’t sign up for two code reviews: one from the relevant team members and one from you, the self-appointed “Chief Code Commenter”.

Pro Tip:
Ask yourself, “Does this really need my input?” If the answer is no, step back. Micromanagement doesn’t improve quality, it just slows everyone down.

Real-Life Example:
I once worked with a leader who spent hours reviewing his team’s (perfectly functional) code because it didn’t “feel” right. In the end, the team spent more time explaining their work than actually delivering. Progress? Nonexistent.

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2. Micromanagement Is a Morale Killer

Nothing screams “I don’t trust you” like nitpicking every decision. The irony? You probably hired this team because they’re skilled, experienced and capable. So why treat them like interns?

Micromanagement isn’t just annoying, it’s demotivating. Teams that feel constantly watched stop thinking creatively, lose confidence and eventually give up. Why bother making decisions when the boss is going to override everything anyway?

Pro Tip:
If you can’t stop micromanaging, take up a hobby. Try woodworking, gardening, or writing the next Lord of the Rings, anything that keeps your hands off the code.

Real-Life Example:
A former colleague had a manager who would “shadow deploy” every release. After the team delivered, he’d secretly push his own changes live, like some kind of coding vigilante. Did it improve things? No. Did it destroy team morale? Absolutely.

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3. Proximity Isn’t Productivity

The “close to the code” leadership style comes from a good place: the desire to stay informed. But being close to every commit, meeting and Slack message doesn’t make you productive; it makes you a bottleneck.

Instead of empowering the team to work autonomously, you’ve inserted yourself into every process. Now, nothing moves forward without your blessing and everyone’s just waiting for you to “review when you have time.” Congrats, you’ve become the single point of failure.

Pro Tip:
Great leaders unblock their teams. If you’re holding things up because you need to “check in” on everything, you’re not leading, you’re stalling.

Real-Life Example:
A manager once joined every single stand-up and asked individual developers for updates on Jira tickets. By the time we finished explaining things to him, the team had lost half the morning. “Productivity” was achieved only in his weekly report.

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4. Autonomy Builds Better Teams (and Leaders)

Here’s a radical idea: trust your team. Empowering your people to make decisions doesn’t mean you’re disconnected; it means you’re building a team that doesn’t depend on you for every tiny thing.

When leaders back off and give teams the freedom to solve problems their way, amazing things happen. People take ownership, build confidence and start delivering better results. And here’s the kicker, you finally get to focus on actual leadership instead of micromanaging GitHub commits.

Pro Tip:
Set clear goals, align on priorities and then get out of the way. If something goes wrong, great leaders coach teams through the problem instead of saying, “I knew we should’ve done it my way.”

Real-Life Example:
One of the good leaders I ever had trusted us to experiment, learn and fail fast. The team delivered faster, collaborated better and felt like we actually owned the work. Weird how trust works, huh?

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5. Fancy Frameworks Won’t Save You

When leaders realize micromanagement doesn’t scale, they often turn to fancy frameworks like SAFe, hoping for the illusion of control. Spoiler alert: SAFe doesn’t mean safe. It just means you’ve added more layers of process and bureaucracy to slow everyone down.

Instead of empowering teams, these frameworks introduce redundant rituals, endless planning sessions and enough acronyms to make your head spin. Flexibility? Gone. Innovation? Stifled. But hey, at least the Gantt chart looks good.

Pro Tip:
If your solution to chaos is “more process,” you’re probably solving the wrong problem. Focus on trust, transparency and clear goals, not over-engineering your team’s workflow.

Real-Life Example:
I once sat in a 2-day SAFe PI Planning session. By the end, we’d spent more time debating alignment than actually building anything. Did we scale agility? Nope. Did we scale confusion? Absolutely.

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6. Leadership Is About Outcomes, Not Outputs

Great leaders focus on results, not micromanaging the “how.” If the product gets delivered, customers are happy and the team is thriving, does it really matter if someone didn’t follow your exact coding style?

When you fixate on outputs (individual lines of code or exact processes) you lose sight of what matters: delivering value. Let your team own the how and you focus on the why and what next.

Pro Tip:
Measure success in outcomes (user value, business impact), not in code reviews, velocity and Jira ticket updates.

Real-Life Example:
A leader once spent an hour critiquing a function name. That hour could’ve been spent shipping the feature or aligning on strategy. Instead, we got a lecture on “naming conventions.” Priorities.

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7. Good Leaders Scale Themselves Out of the Day-to-Day

Good leaders don’t need to be “close to the code” because they’ve built teams they can trust. By empowering your people, you scale yourself. You’re no longer the bottleneck, you’re the enabler.

Your focus shifts from micromanaging to creating an environment where teams thrive. That’s real leadership, not hovering over pull requests.

Pro Tip:
If you’ve built a team that can function without you, you haven’t made yourself obsolete - you’ve made yourself a great leader.

Real-Life Example:
The best leader I knew spent more time coaching, mentoring and removing obstacles than scrutinizing technical decisions. The result? A team that delivered, grew and trusted each other.

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Conclusion: Step Back to Lead Better

Being “close to the code” might make you feel helpful, but it doesn’t make you a good leader. Real leadership is about trust, autonomy and enabling teams to do their best work without you watching their every move.

So, take a step back, let your team own their decisions and focus on the bigger picture. After all, nobody’s looking to follow a backseat developer. They’re looking for a leader.

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