The Two-Way Street leaves little safety in the middle

I'd mentioned earlier that the developer-as-manager can be a hazardous thing: sometimes these folks are promoted to management simply by their tenure and seniority with the company; other times their superiors simply assume, "If she can work wonders with code, she must be great with coders!"

Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that some programmers are excellent at what they do because that's all they want to do. I've seen a good programmer become the most miserable manager on earth, slogging through meetings and longing for the good old days of making the machines do magic. I've seen people quit out of fear that they might be promoted.

The other side of this street is that sometimes developers don't understand the value of management: if they're competent, your project managers are there because they get you the information you need. They're not just people who tell you what to do; they're the ones keeping an eye on the goals, watching the calendar to keep the cart behind the horse, and dealing with every last little want, need, hope or complaint of the client. Meetings may seem meaningless to the person who shapes code all day, but there are actually projects where the simple act of spending a bit of time with the client goes a long way. I'll have more to say on this another time, I'm sure; for now, the important point is not whether a particular role is more or less important. It's whether the person doing the role can do it well.