Dan Neely wrote: to entice senior devs to continue writing code instead of going into management. While I probably don't fit into the handsome group here and that my belonging to the intelligent group is often in question, that's never stopped me from offering my opinion before. There are just too many business Microsoft-only shops to ever think that Microsoft development products (.NET or whatever comes down the line next) would ever be out-dated in the near future. Predictions beyond the near future are more likely to be completely bogus. Remember the "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" quote of the past. Now for the reason for the quoted text above ... I'm nearing the end of my career as a programmer and many years of that long career someone tried to convince me to go into management as an advancement. I always avoided it, sometimes resulting in damage to that career (i.e. lower pay), because I didn't see it as an advancement in my intended career but as a complete change of career. I didn't want to be a manager, I wanted to be a programmer, even though many companies and managers thought it was a "natural" progression to the point of discriminating against older programmers who chose not to become managers. No one ever tried to pay me more to stay in programming. I was more often looked down on for being an old programmer. I find it interesting that others might have had the opposite experience.