[globalgoat]

I moved after I left Microsoft, and I never looked back. The key for me was doing it at the right time for me, but also within the right place. I would never have taken a management position at Microsoft! When I started I was in my late 30's, had recently had children and was just a different person to that which I'd been as an engineer. It was a natural progression. Many companies had offered me management positions previously, but I'd always turned them down as wrong place or wrong time. When I finally did move it was into a smallish Nordic company (about 150 staff), where I still had a good hands on potential. Then over the next 5 -6 years I slowly took increasingly senior roles and decreased the amount of technical work. In my current role I've not done a single technical thing and I'm extremely happy. I absolutely love managing technical staff and engineers, and they tell me I'm quite good at it. I put this down to many years of seeing how it shouldn't be done (particularly at Microsoft!) and my simple principle tends to be "done act like a dick". This along with positive reinforcement and a strengths based approach to my teams takes me a long way.

I still tinker at home but now my main outlet technically is teaching children to program through @codeclub.

If I was to say one thing, it's to chose the organisation you do such a move with very carefully. Just because a company is a great employer in one role does not make it a good one in another.