Development skills are absolutely 100% more portable than management skills, because a) basic math says that everyone hires way more devs than they hire dev man

Development skills are absolutely 100% more portable than management skills, because a) basic math says that everyone hires way more devs than they hire dev managers, and b) many dev managers get promoted from within so there are even fewer hires out there than there are positions. The further up you go, the more true this is. Having closely watched someone go through a director-level job search vs. having jobs thrown in my lap as a developer, empirical reality matches theory here, too.