Definitely. In my experience, the nitty gritty "labor" part of software development, the actual process of learning and writing code, gives great satisfaction and enjoyment. But after a few years, a few projects and / or jobs, and especially once your hard work is effectively thrown away in favor of something newer and shinier written and advocated by younger and louder people, you get more cynical.

But once you get over that, you realize that code itself is just an implementation detail, and it's the people higher up that have more influence. As developer you get paid an X amount a year, that's about it; as a higher up, you get to play with millions, both as money and as 'resources'.

As a developer you'll learn your limitations, that you cannot solve everything and that you alone are not good or fast enough to tackle nontrivial projects (currently in the middle of that, single developer, at the current rate it'll take years for my software to become viable. At least I'm on the payroll). If you have bigger ambitions, climbing the ladder is the way to go. Personally I'm hoping to be able to get a small team together in the coming year.