Another way of thinking about this: Managing people really well is really hard. Most managers are not the best managers. Average managers often end up doing things that reduce the output of their group in the interest of things not going horribly wrong. The Pareto distribution rears its ugly head, once again.

At least as a software developer, you're only breaking code. But you start affecting people's lives, emotional well being, and career paths when you're a manager, and I find it rare where a manager understands this.

A lot of times early companies will go through the motions of, "needing" a VP of Engineering, or CTO, or whatever. In reality their process does not need that, and those roles are either meaningless titles at best or cause unnecessary process to crop up and hinder productivity.

This created conflict exactly as you'd expect and team morale fell apart, projects slipped, etc. Of course, management takes no responsibility for this, instead diffusing blame to employees via suck-it-up type platitudes (couched in "nicer" language but with that essential meaning).

A good manager is really, really hard to find. Good developers are easy to find (relative to good managers). So, while I don't want to get into management, I also recommend it to anyone who might have potential in that regard.

This, I found, is too much for me. I have no remorse if I demotivate my managers; and I can keep my mouth shut and not say anything, to avoid demotivating my junior-dev colleagues. But as a manager, "keeping my mouth shut" is not an option.

But what’s in it for the developer? If the developers is happy and well-compensated bad has no managerial/executive ambitions/fantasies, why ruin a good thing (with a gamble, at that)?

But it is not a good idea if you really are passionate about the writing. For example, my daughter majored in English because she wants to write novels, not because she wants to teach English. So in her case I certainly wouldn't tell her to go get a job as an English teacher.

In my opinion, the second worst kind of manager is one that doesn't want to be a manager and would rather stay an individual contributor. Their inner conflict is harmful to the group.

If it's your job to magnify the output of your developers, when you know intimately how to do their job, you can get spectacular results.

Non-technical managers can't do this, they don't have the depth and insight to help shape their team the same way a developer does.