It depends. At a lot of companies, manager and senior software engineer are roughly equivalent in compensation. To make "insane" amounts of compensation you've

It depends. At a lot of companies, manager and senior software engineer are roughly equivalent in compensation. To make "insane" amounts of compensation you've got to make director or better, and that's a completely different job/life than engineering. A lot of people went into engineering because they don't have that in 'em.