Was in the same place as your top-dev. Was exhausted after a day of coding, without getting real appreciation, neither monetary, nor in terms on mindshare. I wa

Was in the same place as your top-dev. Was exhausted after a day of coding, without getting real appreciation, neither monetary, nor in terms on mindshare. I was always looked upon as an "IT guy" or "technical staff" that gets in the way of implementing great business and marketing ideas created in the heads of great minds, that were so great that it wasn't even possible to write them down accurately. Then I switched to management path, I found out that although I do only a very limited amount of coding at work right now, I'm enjoying it much more. As an added benefit, I am not mentally tired anymore when I come back home, since at work I only do blah-blah social, blah-blah report, blah-blah management. This leaves me with enough time and energy in the evening to work on really interesting projects for an excellent hourly rate, or on my own hobby stuff. The drawback? I don't watch TV anymore.