i did actually leave programming (almost 10 years ago) for a job as a people manager (of programmers/test). it's a lot more fun to write code as opposed to dea

i did actually leave programming (almost 10 years ago) for a job as a people manager (of programmers/test). it's a lot more fun to write code as opposed to dealing with all the nuances of personalities, politics, processes, etc. i do have a few side projects which have allowed me to stay as a pretty effective coder, but at the end of the day, i'm also doing a lot of non-development things on my side project like go to market definition, managing people, project management, and slideware. there are definitely very tedious things that programmers have to deal with like unmarshalling and marshalling data across backend to frontend components or test automation (think of having a multi-tier system with ios app, database, email service for forgotten password and having to automate all of that). but at the end of the day, the thing i like most about programming is the ability to see the things i create doing something useful. seeing the end result that's of high quality gives me a sense of pride. i'm definitely a maker, it's what i was born to do. but at the end of the day it's about risk/reward and opportunity cost, at this point there's just too much to give up, and the side project isnt panning out yet. on a slight tangent, i have an electrical/computer engineering background and was supposed to go into hardware like most of my classmates, but i ended up liking the fact that i had something tangible after hours of programming, even though it was virtual, and with hardware i'd have nothing to show for it, but a pic controller lighting up some led's, a breadboard with a bunch of mixed logic implementing some simple thing, or some vhdl state machine that effectively did something simple. no offense to all the engineers working on this type of thing, but it just wasnt as exciting to me. i find that there's some balance to it all, like getting paid well, but also having hobbies on the side that you can soak yourself into. but then again, i've heard many a story about people doing what they love and for lots of money.