The ability to do real, forward progressing complex work in small chunks has made a huge difference in both my personal life and my professional one. I suspect it will also be helpful as I get older, because eventually great memory skills fade!
I imagine it's necessary for small companies, possible for growing companies, and eventually impossible for sufficiently sized companies where the CTO role is at least 40 hours of your week.
Also as someone nearing his late 30s I'm sometimes surprised how good some programmers are as young as late teens/early 20s! These rare talents mostly need me to prevent them from going into rabbit holes but when they are pointing in the right direction can produce amazing results.
I am sure my time is better spent helping a few of these do better than what I'd get from just myself programming directly in the same amount of time (management is a multiplier on the team's productivity and that multiplier can easily get smaller than 1.0).