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The sad truth is that when you get to a certain level as a programmer/developer/designer/whathaveyou, the only way to keep advancing in an organization is to move to management, or move to another company.

There is nothing worse than being a middle manager is a crappy organization. Never take a middle managment job unless you have researched the place and know from insiders whether the place is run by adults or people like Dilberts pointy hair boss.

As mezmo said, for most people in most organizations there's an upper limit to how far you can go as a pure techie. This exists for all sorts of reasons, even in tech-centric businesses. In most orgs, upper mgmt doesn't understand what techies really do and how it relates back to the bottom line, so they value the folks who are doing things they do understand, like managing people. So managers are generally more valued than equally-skilled techies ("equally-skilled" being relative to their mgmt or techie peers).

Even the few organizations that truly recognize that techies are not interchangable cogs (as opposed to playing lip service that all employees are valuable while giving outrageous bonuses to the guys that sell the impossible-to-deliver-with-a-profit projects) have upper limits, and those limits are well below the C-level.

That said, out of personal preference I'd rather be a manager than a sales guy, which is another career-advancing track that the author doesn't discuss.

I'll agree with mezmo to some extent. You can advance to CTO, but just look at the ratio of jobs. At our company we have a title of Sr. Consultant SW Engineer, which is roughly equivalent to a director of engineering. For each sr. consultant there are probably five or six directors. Pure odds tells you that you have a better chance of making it to that level on the management track.

What gets ignored is that for every director there are 6-10 managers. The pyramid narrows for every track, and your odds of getting to director, sr. director, vp, etc. start decreasing pretty dramatically. It's also somewhat time-based, so if you're a management superstar you still have to slog it out for 3-4 years at each level (in most cases). The reality is that advancement on any track at a traditional company is tedious, political, and risky. If you think management is the only way up, think long and hard about what that climb looks like.

So what do you do? Work for yourself. This is where being a tech worker shines. You have so many more opportunities to go it alone. Want to consult/contract? If you're good (I mean really good) you can make a killing. Want to start your own business? You have far more possibilities than your middle management counterpart. Want more upside in a traditional environment? Go to a startup. There are ways "up" that don't require you to be a manager... except of your own career.

While I agree with mcwong that there are other options, his options still involve non-techie skills to advance.

If you consult/contract, you have to sell yourself to new customers so you get new contracts. I admit that if you're good, and I mean really good, then you only have to do this a limited number of times because your work&reputation will make a few sales for you without effort, assuming your first customer is an ongoing concern and/or is connected to organizations that can send more work to you.

If you start your own firm, you'll need the managerial and sales skills necessary to run a business. Even if you outsource most of the non-techi activities (e.g., accounting, payroll, hosting, advsertising, etc.), you will still need to manage the relationships&monitor the activities of your outsourcers. This is true of ANY business...I once had my dentist ranting about how he had no clue that he'd be spending so much time on running this office instead of actually doing dentistry.

Assuming you are actually creating something you hope will generate money for you, either you will be selling your product or you will be managing your sales staff.