Posts filed under leadership.
In any company (small companies especially), it’s easy for leaders to get busy. Rushing between planning meetings, standups, retros, and one-on-ones, then trying to squeeze in some dev work as well.
When I was a backend team lead, I would sometimes jump in and help during sprints by writing code or diving into operations. Occasionally I would even be the best person for the job because I had domain knowledge for that service or sub-system.