Comment by smichel17

I think a significant contributing factor is that management is a local maximum.

I am a self-identified "sort of knows what they are doing" (albeit, sometimes insecure about that) professional programmer. I've also had the chance to take a leadership position. So, I think I have a useful perspective here.

The amount "I" can accomplish in a leadership position is so much higher than by coding directly. So, on the margins, it's really hard to justify time spent coding, compared to coordinating others. It's incredibly easy to imagine stagnating as a coder due to not doing very much of it. Yet, clearly when everyone follows this route, software quality suffers. I don't have any particular solutions.

Perhaps eventually the rate of expansion of programmers will slow, and we'll end up with too many sort of knows what they're doing" programmers for everyone to move to management, so people/companies will start waiting until programmers hit the experienced mark to make the leap.