You are exactly right which is why I now submit false names to places where my name doesn't matter. Every time I get an email sent to "Fred" (my name isn't Fred), I know the information was sold. I use the last name, and sometimes a suffix in the first name, to tag the origin site.

I like my Pixel 2 XL because of the pure Google experience without the bloat of the Samsungs and HTCs I had before. However, there is now a very good alternative. I plan to replace my Pixel 2 XL in about a year with whatever the latest and greatest is from OnePlus. I have been very impressed with their handsets and love that they keep the bloat to a minimum. On top of all that, they are much more affordably priced. So, I am glad Google did Pixel but I won't miss them if they go.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

First of all, I don't want to minimize the seriousness of this topic. It deserves discussion and action. I'm just not sure it belongs here, on this site.

I have come to /. for many years to stay up to speed on the latest tech news and other interesting news that interests me. I also follow many other sites for political content. Lately, every site has seemed to wade into politics more than usual. I understand we live in a hyper partisan environment. However, we must have some safe havens from it. This site serves as that, to some extent, for me. I would hate to see it devolve into yet another political dystopia.

This site was built for a particular niche. I don't know about the rest of you, but I would like to see it stay in the niche.

I obviously only had a few paragraphs to use to make a judgement, so I wouldn't take what I said at complete face value. However, if that tone came across in just a few paragraphs, I have to wonder what tone your employer has perceived. I can understand many of your feelings. I experienced a lot of them too. I didn't come to many of the realizations I talk about above until a while after I made the transition.

I guess it all comes down to one question: what do you want to do long-term? Every skilled worker teetering on the edge of management comes to this fork in the road. Do you want to commit yourself to the management path or to the skilled worker path? If you choose the management path, you are basically starting over, but the long-term rewards are potentially greater. In the early days, it may not be uncommon for your highly skilled and highly tenured employees to make more than you do. That is ok. You NEED the best talent at almost any cost. They will be the most productive and therefore make you look the best. Money and title simply follow. Always recruit talent over experience.

I am a health care CIO and a seasoned PMP and there are several aspects of your post that concern me. The first a general attitude that you know better than everyone else. I'm not saying I'm the best leader or even a good one, but I expect my managers to have some humility with their employees and I do my best to maintain that as well. IMHO, humility is the beginning of respect and the beginning of great leadership. Many of the best decisions I have ever made have come from ideas generated by my management team. How will you ever even know about those ideas if you already know more than they do? A leader's job is not to know everything, but to know all of the options and to choose the best one. Your employees will never feel comfortable bringing forth ideas with the kind of attitude that permeates your post.

The other thing that concerns me is that you seem to think management/leadership is the same thing as PM. As a PMP, I definitely recognize how PM can develop and sharpen leadership skills but they are no where near the same thing. When managing a project, you are aligning resources to accomplish specific tasks to complete a specific project. A good project manager will inspire the team to work cohesively and productively. I have seen very few good project managers. Managing a team that is juggling many tasks every single day is very different. You are responsible for their success, for their morale and engagement. It is no longer checking off tasks on a to do list like what you have experienced in PM. The few paragraphs I see above give me doubt that you have the attitude and interpersonal skills to develop the necessary relationships with employees to motivate them to perform at their best.

Lastly, your current skills, while still valuable, diminish in value when you switch over to management. That is because you should be spending much less time performing the actual work, and more time managing your team and collaborating with other management. I started out as a software developer spending 90% or more of my time writing code. The day I moved over into management, that dropped to almost zero. My software development skills went from being my strongest asset to one of my weakest overnight. Low performing managers have a difficult time with this and try to hang onto work they have no business doing.

I know this post is harsh. However, if you are serious about moving over to management, then you need to hear these harsh realities. I hope you can incorporate this feedback into your strategy. I wish you the best.