You’re not proving your value. You’re burning it.

Some engineers can’t stop touching things.
Every PR, every design doc, every config file that even sniffs in their direction - they’re in there.
Sometimes it’s because they care.
Sometimes it’s because they’re afraid it’ll fall apart without them.
And sometimes - let’s be honest - it’s because they’re just a little too proud of being “the one who always catches things.”

“If I don’t review this, we’ll miss something.”

“If I don’t handle this part, it’ll take longer.”

“If I don’t fix it now, I’ll just have to fix it later.”

That mindset gets rewarded -for a while.
You become the trusted one. The thorough one. The safe pair of hands.

But eventually, it breaks.
You become the bottleneck.
And not the kind that systems get designed around — the kind that burns out before anyone notices.

You’re Not Scaling. You’re Just Present.

Here’s the hard truth: if everything goes through you, nothing gets through fast.

The code might still be good.
The tests might still pass.
But the team starts slowing down. Quietly.

People wait for your review.
They avoid certain parts of the system because “that’s yours.”
They stop owning decisions - because you’re going to tweak it anyway.

You're not enabling progress. You're shadow managing it.
It’s like being a backstage ghost in a play you refuse to quit - haunting every scene, rewriting the script mid-performance, then complaining the show’s too slow.

It’s Not About Backing Off. It’s About Letting Others Step Up.

This isn’t a call to disappear.
It’s a call to be more intentional about where (and how) you show up.

You don’t need to stop reviewing code.
You need to stop rewriting it in someone else's PR.
You don’t need to stop sharing opinions.
You need to start letting other people own decisions you could have made faster.

(And if your reviews feel more like reruns of your own work than actual collaboration, you might want to revisit Your Team’s Culture Is Written in Your Pull Requests.)

That’s not lowering your standards.

That’s raising the team’s.

Trust doesn’t mean pretending everything’s perfect.
It means believing others can make good-enough calls - even if they wouldn’t be yours.

You’re Stuck in Single-Player Mode

If your measure of success is still based on how much code you wrote, how many problems you solved, or how many decisions you personally unblocked - you’re not scaling.
You’re just playing on hard mode with no co-op.

The real shift is realizing that you don’t scale by staying involved.
You scale by teaching, trusting, and stepping back at the right time.

This isn’t about being less engaged.

It’s about moving from doing to amplifying.

(And if you’re still clinging to every task, every line, every hotfix?

That’s not scaling. That’s ego with a to-do list.)

Also: You’re Going to Burn Out

Touching everything isn’t just bad for the team.
It’s unsustainable.

Even if you can juggle it all now - you won’t be able to forever.
You’ll get tired. You’ll get resentful.
And you’ll start to believe the lie that the only way to maintain quality is to be in everything, all the time, until you quietly break.

Spoiler: you don’t have to.
You’re allowed to feel proud of work you didn’t directly do - especially if you helped make it possible.

Redefine the Win

It’s not “I shipped it.”
It’s “They shipped it, and they didn’t need me.”

It’s not about being absent.

It’s about building something that runs even when you take a long weekend.
Or a sabbatical.
Or just a nap.
(I could go for a nap right about now, actually.)

So yes - review carefully. Set the standard. Guide when it counts.
But don’t get stuck chasing polish while the team’s trying to move forward.
(Shipped still beats pretty, remember?)

Stop proving your value by touching everything.
You’re not scaling. You’re just delaying the inevitable.

If the idea of not being involved stresses you out, that’s the signal.

Follow it.