[joshstrange]

On the flip side the best developers are not always (or even often) the best managers. I like technical managers but as someone currently managing and still contributing code I can tell you that they are 2 very different mindsets. Switching between them has a significant context switching penalty.

[ergocoder]

That's the price they (and many companies) are willing to pay.

They want to find people who can both code and manage others at the same time.