Failure

Damn, i had an interview 3rd round at this bank.. and I failed ! I actually did pretty well in the end.. so my theory is.. i misplayed it a bit. Its actually a slight step down for me anyways, so i guess if I wanted it, I needed to downplay the management tasks I have and play up the hands on hardcore developer/architect portion. My strategy was to play both and hope they will be okay with (a) paying me alot, (b) maybe revising the role to fit me (ie, bigger role), rather than have me move a bit down.

In the end, I'm not sure if that was wise or what. I do realize though if you move up the chain.. then the opportunities are less and less. If you are a developer you are generic but in high demand because a project needs just 1 architect or lead, but maybe 5 developers. The sole proj manage/lead/architect can scale bigger as well, but you can never have enough good developers.

It makes me wonder if I should stay super technical or not. Life as a simple engineer is maybe happiest.

I kind of like management in the sense that its leadership but you don't actually do anything. You just set the plan and make decisions. I'm getting better at decision making. I'm also getting better at being strict about deliverables. My hawaii attitude makes it such that I am "whatever goes" and that doesn't make my managers and user happy.