If you rarely write software then you are not moving towards mastery in engineering it. There is no such thing as a master painter who is primarily a manager of painters.
You can be a masterful manager, can deliver much more value than a single programmer, etc. But the engineering of software occurs primarily in the thinking about and directly working on it in its specifics.
I see what you mean but it's more nuanced than that in my case.
It's not like he turned 50 and suddenly stopped coding. I'm talking about a real nerd, a person who codes even on their free time.
And he still writes code in other projects, he's a consultant, but in our project he's not touching any code, only advising. And he's 50+ now so he has 15 more years until retirement.
Of course I've seen people here work beyond retirement because our field is so easy on the body.
You can be a masterful manager, can deliver much more value than a single programmer, etc. But the engineering of software occurs primarily in the thinking about and directly working on it in its specifics.