Couldn't agree more about not exiting software engineering completely. Had this experience at a prominent tech company (wherein promotion = no more coding) and

Couldn't agree more about not exiting software engineering completely. Had this experience at a prominent tech company (wherein promotion = no more coding) and it became so bad I had to walk away. I'm trying to tailor my career now to be primarily programming-oriented, but with opportunities to explain ideas/concepts and think about value creation. A relentless focus on creating business value is a huge differentiator in software engineering.