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Is being a programmer a good career?

Is it generally accepted that moving to a management role (which involves no programming) is considered a good way to advance one's career as a programmer?

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    The statement is contradictory: when you're no longer programming, you no longer have a career as a programmer.  If you're in an organization where you can't advance without taking a purely managerial role, leave* (to a different organization in the company e.g., from IT to Engineering/R&D or to a different company). Most serious technology organizations have two tracks: engineering management and technical. The salaries should be similar e.g., distinguished engineer earning a VP salary, architect/principal engineer earning a director salary. The technical track involves technical leadership (you'd be asked upon to do more than write code, but also help set the overall technology direction for a specific area). Being an engineering manager generally still means writing code (but also doing work related to hiring, planning, resource allocations, etc...), moving higher (to a director or VP spot) means less actual hands on work but plenty of technology management and requires technical expertise (there is no way to get to that position without having programmed). Just to give an example, in every single job I had, the only person without a technical background in my reporting line was the CEO. *Note: I didn't say "leave, unless you're no longer interested in programming". Even if you're not (which is perfectly fine), still do so. It's worse to be the lone technical manager amongst a crowd of non-technical managers than it is to be a direct report reporting to a non-technical manager: you'll be marginalized by rest of management, being unable to do anything for your direct reports.

Alex Feinberg at Quora Visit the source

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Extending Alex's point, you might rephrase the question as "do I want to move up in management, where I'll do managerial things --  staff projects, oversee people and budgets, mentor new hires, handle cross-departmental politics, probably get more pay and stock" or "do I want to move up in a technical role, such as senior architect or internal consulting engineer, and does my company have such a promotion track?" In my experience, the best technical companies recognize that great engineers (aka developers aka programmers) need to be rewarded and challenged, but not necessarily by being pushed into management roles that are poor fits -- and which they don't want. If you're at a company that only recognizes management as the path to glory and success and money and recognition, then you probably want to be somewhere else.

Rich Mironov

An individual should be able to take on additional responsibilities and increase his influence in the organization (thus qualifying for an improved comp) in several ways. Which way you chose to grow depends on you - what are your strenghts, what do you enjoy doing, what kind of challenges do you like to tackle. One path is to take on management responsibilities: Lead Dev / Dev Manager / Director / CTO. Note that in the context of self-organizing teams, the role of a Manager is more that of a coach, who removes blockers and provides servant leadership. Oh yeah, there is also the HR component (Get. Keep. Grow), though some managers may choose to delegate some of these HR responsibilities so they focus primarily on the project work. Another path is to increase your craftmanship. For example, grow into a Software Architect or Platform Architect role. Note that Leadership and Drive can happen at any levels, and irrespective of your seniority or title.

Adrian Moise

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