I've gone back and forth between engineering and management several times in my four decade plus career and I've ended up back in engineering now and expect to stay there until I retire at this point. For me, the best combination of both roles was when I was the senior software architect at Macromedia (for six years) where I got to manage a team of architects -- each a specialist in their own field -- and we were assigned to various projects to provide something of a "lead engineer" role, so we all got to be hands on, and I got to be both hands on and also a manager. It was interesting wearing both hats at the same time -- sort of the Goldilocks of roles: not too much management, not too little management, mostly just the right amount of coding!
Throughout the last three decades, whenever my role has involved too little coding, I've always been able to use the "safety valve" of OSS contribution as an escape from "too much management" and for that I am very grateful, especially as I get a reasonable amount of sponsorship on GitHub these days for my contributions!
I've gone back and forth between engineering and management several times in my four decade plus career and I've ended up back in engineering now and expect to stay there until I retire at this point. For me, the best combination of both roles was when I was the senior software architect at Macromedia (for six years) where I got to manage a team of architects -- each a specialist in their own field -- and we were assigned to various projects to provide something of a "lead engineer" role, so we all got to be hands on, and I got to be both hands on and also a manager. It was interesting wearing both hats at the same time -- sort of the Goldilocks of roles: not too much management, not too little management, mostly just the right amount of coding!
Throughout the last three decades, whenever my role has involved too little coding, I've always been able to use the "safety valve" of OSS contribution as an escape from "too much management" and for that I am very grateful, especially as I get a reasonable amount of sponsorship on GitHub these days for my contributions!