This is a much repeated notion, but I've never worked anywhere good developers are promoted into management. Tons of bad developers end up in management, though...
Am I right in guessing you've worked for smallish organizations? I've seen some amazing programmers promoted, mostly as a mechanism to pay them more. I've even seen one forced to quit after not accepting repeated promotion attempts.
IMHO the single most important advice for any hacker who wants to be happy is to avoid large organizations, even Google. Large organizations are the plague, a small company is good medicine, and your own startup is the cure.
This is a good article. I've been through something very similar myself. I spent about 5 years as a manager, and I don't really want to do "spreadsheet" management again. I want to own my project, and I don't mind being the lead with a small team, but I never want to be the "status updater" again.
This reminds me of a phrase that irritates the $^%^ out of me - "Better a good programmer than a bad manager." Of course, it's true - better a good anything than a bady anything, right? But here are the two phrases that nobody seems to say...
"Better a good manager than a bad programmer".
and finally...
"Better a good manager than a good programmer?" or is it "better a good programmer than a good manager?"
In many organizations, I'm convinced that the second is true. Bad managers do have the ability to ruin a team, and so you need to make sure that you have a decent level of talent there. But for a lot of companies, especially small ones working on innovative things (read: startups), the top techincal talent is vastly more important.
In other words, if you have someone who could be a great technical contributor and a great technical manager, you're better off with the technical contributions.
Rob's piece is an excellent reflection on keeping to ones integrity, and finding a balance in the role that best fits one's passion. I've been around managers who are proud of their job as a over-the-shoulder screaming maniac, and managers that sleep during meetings. Until designs and projects are clearly defined, and individuals feel capable to independently fulfill the task, bad managers, pigeonholed managers, appear to be the corporate solution.
