However, it takes a certain personality. If you are entrepreneurial and don’t freak out when your gig is up and you have no job, you are a good candidate. If you need stable, predictable insurance and pay, perm is better. As a consultant, your skills are your job security.

You will also get treated differently. Some employees, dissatisfied with their lot, will consider you thier dog. Use a rolled up newspaper and a firm voice saying “No!” Cause you’re not there to make friends, but rather to get a job done.

All in all, I’m glad I went the consultant route. For comparison sake:

33 yrs old
ASP.Net/C#/SQL/AD/etc
Perm: $80k
Consulting: $55/hr or ~$115k

I plan to excerise an LLC I set up recently and go 1099 for ~$70/hr or $145k

Good post and i really like it.

Thanks
Prashant Jalasutram
http://prashantjalasutram.blogspot.com/

Managers definitely have there place but I have to question an org chart where the manager to developer ratio is 1:1 or even 2 or 3 to 1.

At the end of the day, I think if you don’t go the consultant or contractor route, that management is the best option for earning more and getting more say.

Also, at least at my previous employer, your statement about a manager’s job being less secure than a technical director’s would not hold. A manager would have much more interaction with higher-ups in the company and would be part of their “club” … even if his/her project was canceled, the upper management would find a place for the manager to land. Whereas with a technical director, management wouldn’t see as much detrimental effect in the person leaving, as they’re not obviously essential to day-to-day operations and probably not as visible in general.

The basic definition is that current managers would have us believe that the work they do is the very reason for project success and therefore they believe (and have convinced others) that their’s is the most important role.

The real truth is that most managers are just overhead, projects would likely self-assemble without them, especially with good devs on the job. However, companies do things like targeting management for bonuses and taking other steps to make management a “position of privilege”. The truth is, good managers don’t deliver projects on time, good programmers deliver projects on time and managers just guide the process.

The concept of “separate streams” begins to address the problem of Technical Expertise vs Managerial Expertise. But it’s also an industry thing. “Similar” professional industries, like engineering or accounting, all have a kind of set progression chart from grunt to project manager. Most current “managers” don’t actually recognize the difference between our and the engineering field, let alone begin to address the number of engineering project managers who probably shouldn’t be there anyways.

It’s the Peter Principle + poor management + uncertain staff (like yourself at times) that allow the whole vicious cycle to keep turning. Every once in a while, people get off the cycle (like you), but right now we’re still early in the game and there are more people hopping on the bike rather than off.

In 10 years, people will know better, the industry will mature (a little) and the Technical / Managerial divide will be well-documented. There’s a trend right now that’s dividing the industry and that’s the “Great Development Houses” vs. “The Body Shops”. Expect that the former will pick up on (or has picked up on) this divide and that they’re capitalizing by hiring the right people into the right positions.

I started at the company I’m at now as an entry level ASP developer where we had a company of 5 people. Within 3 years we had 15 people, including 5 developers. During this time I was promoted to Software Development Manager, though I still coded quite a bit. We now are back to 5 people, and sadly enough I’m the only one left that can write .Net code. My job is not invaluable by default though, I’m just playing many roles right now.

With less people to manage, I’m taking the time to ponder on what made those developers leave and where our contracts went. Most of our troubles deals with goverment spending though 2 of our top developers left on their own will.

As for pay, my pay as a developer was mid-range for the area, but doubled when I became Software Development Manager. I get the title, the money, and get to act like a developer. Winner winner chicken dinner.