> The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. The scope of a

> The "parallel" technical career path never seems to deliver equal amounts of power, or even money, as compared to managers on the same level. The scope of a person focused solely on technology is narrower than the typical scope of senior management, and does not typically cover key functions like strategy (i.e. top-level decision-making) and sales (i.e. revenue generation). I'm not saying that the latter are more valuable than the former but I will just point out that there are plenty of examples of companies with great technology that fail because of poor strategy or an inability to market their product/service as effectively as competitors who have crappy technology but better (or, at least, more effective) sales and marketing. I think that managers also enjoy leverage from the people/teams/resources they manage - a kind of reflected-glory halo effect. The equivalent for a technologist (e.g. the creation of technology that makes others more productive) is not as obvious in most companies for various reasons (e.g. senior management lack of understanding of the impact technology has upon their company, non-technical managers' greater focus on self-promotion).