I guess what I'm saying is that, if I'm not careful, I'll be management in 3 years. I'm essentially pseudo-project management already. I have a technical title but I don't get to do anything even remotely interesting in the technical side (and it's a Java/C++ shop and our code is in stone with little changes). I'm awesome at this 'non-technical' stuff -- good leadership skills, great communication/planning skills, plenty of experience dealing with major OEM players, although siting on telecoms is leaving the analytical side of my brain turning to mush. You don't get to become a Damian or a Larry like this -- you get to become a drone. It seems "spare time" is the only way to keep the wheels turning -- it's going to be hard to find that anywhere. I don't care about salary -- I want to use my brain cells. That's why I went into what I did. Business-programming is not what is exciting about the field. That's usually just grunt-work which anyone can do. Innovation...where is that at? It's not nearly as common as it should be.

Some time I want to give a talk to my old ACM chapter about what the real world is really like. To break up everyone's illusions :) Ok, not really, that would be cruel... but all the theory and fun and games isn't what you get to do "out there", regardless of whether you work for IBM (I have) or smaller shops (which I also have).