You're all a bunch of wussies.

I've been a manager for a little over 5 years now after having "graduated" from individual contributorship. I've had enough exposure to see both sides and adapt myself to get satisfaction from a different angle of delivering added value to both customer and company.

I see that each member of my team, pure techies, are on a different planet. *They* are the ones doing all the work, right? Yet, they don't have to talk or report to customers and are not interested in customer long term strategies. Delivery is at the end of the chain. It's more interesting, at least to me, to be at the source of decisions: you're part of planning the direction, you're effectively building the future. And you're there to follow-up and steer on the execution. What more can you ask for?

I was once one of them. And I was forced out due to massive and repeated offshoring projects. I'm pretty sure I'm not that special to be the only one able to see and appreciate the qualities of different roles in an organisation, right? Maybe they are short sighted.

I'm exaggerating just to give some counterweight to the post/feedback above. Still, get over it, your effort is very much worth your while: engineers are not into bringing structure to an organisation and thinking long-term customer centred. They need you to think about that.

I'm afraid most of the feelings above originate from feelings of shame (I'm not allowed to wear jeans anymore...). And maybe there's a need to spend some time on gaining insight on how companies work. There's more to earning a salary than plain hands-on developing/admin/whatever.

Even Sales reps have a right to existence. Sometimes.

There shall not be a single minute I will feel myself as described in the first few paragraphs of the Faux-Zone. It would mean the peter principle...