I actually did a brief stint in management and would never do it again... I much prefer being in a developer or architect role. I like to mentor, and don't mind doing some PM type stuff... but never again do I want to be saddled with management or hr type tasks ever again.
Why is that? I tend to agree that middle management is a trap. If you don't get creative control but have to push other people to work on things, it can be worse than being a grunt, because your job is actually to enforce directives that you don't agree with. If it's bad to follow a stupid rule, it's even worse to be expected to make 10 other people follow it and to discipline (or even fire) them if they don't comply.
Middle management can often be the worst of both worlds. I don't know if that's intrinsic to the job, or just intrinsic to how organizations conceive of the job.
The sad truth, however, is that most people have no options other than climbing, because so much of this industry is "manage or be managed". It's at the point where I would generally not take a job without a manager-equivalent title at the VP/Dir level unless it was a small organization or one that I knew well, even though I have no need to be running a team. Ideally, you want to be a programmer in terms of what you actually get to do, but VP-equivalent in terms of being able to get shit done, be listened to when you need something, and avoid undesirable and distracting work being dropped onto you.
