I'm a developer who worked for 35 years and never became a manager. I wouldn't say I fit into any of these classifications. I worked in the defense industry for

I'm a developer who worked for 35 years and never became a manager. I wouldn't say I fit into any of these classifications. I worked in the defense industry for 5 years, then switched to commercial software. I worked with several different languages in companies with very different products. I was constantly learning, but never thought of myself as a 'super developer'. I learned new languages and new product areas: C/Bash for a company building ethernet hardware in the '80s. (A full TCP/IP stack ran on the board). Switched to a company building software for the Mac. (C and Pascal). Did contract work for modem companies. Learned Perl (Bleah) when working for an Internet Advertising company. Learned Ruby on Rails working for a company that was doing analysis on Air-conditioning systems in skyscrapers in order to save the building operators money and energy. I stayed very interested and involved. Did my best work when my manager could carve out a project that I could work on by myself and be done in 3 months or so, without needing any supervision. "Management skills" is a huge misnomer in my mind. I wasn't management material, and not especially good on a team, because I'd get angry when people disagreed with me. Peter Drucker said the most important part of being a manager was having character. Not something one can acquire in any easy way. I got a lot of therapy to deal with my own anger, so that helped.