“We also assign ourselves to lower-level work because we’re fleeing from challenge. Yes, I know, we all love a good challenge, but that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes get cold feet and look for a way out. The challenges of management are daunting: They lead us into the scarily intangible world of people relations, motivation, societal formation, conflict, and conflict resolution. In my own case, I was promoted into a management position, fresh from a technological job where there were no intangibles. I had been a real-time system designer just before my promotion. Systems design is deliciously black-and-white: Your design works or it doesn’t. It is sufficiently flexible and accommodating to change or it isn’t. You may not know this perfectly at design time, but the implementation phase, which comes next, will quickly prove your design acceptable (even elegant) or not. There are few nuances.”