Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1425

Agree.

For some period of years I was a "working manager", i.e. I ran a smallish product development group (including budget, hire-fire, etc.) but also did a good deal of top level design, and some prototype coding ("Here is an idea that might solve THAT problem"). I was lucky in that I had very good people working for me, and enough budget to hire good people when more were needed. Also had three people who were excellent project managers, so mostly all I had to do was make sure the team was "well fed and comfortable and well respected" and get out of the way. There were, of course, the usual fusses up the management chain for more budget and bigger raises and better tools, and the occasional need to referee some problem or another within the group :-)

It was much later, when I was starting to think in terms of "Gee, early retirement means 7 more years" that it seemed to make sense to me to firmly move out of management and back into a technical role. That worked out quite well also, it got me working with a lot of younger folks, many with only a few years experience. Learned a lot from them. Was a fun time.

There were other periods of time when things were not all fun :-)

--

... Hank