[loumf]

I went into management/executive roles AND kept up my development skills. Now, I'm back to being 100% a dev.

I really doubt I would have earned what I did as a manager if I didn't love doing the job (and therefore spent a lot of time trying to get better at it).

The way I got started was in helping my manager with some of his tasks (because I was really interested in learning about it). When he left, he recommended me to fill his position.