Reasons Programmers Leave

Because good managers are also hard to find, *especially" those clueful about technical aspects. Not many programmers will make great managers, but there's always an incentive to try and push them a bit.

I'm a programmer that eventually would like to be in a leadership position.

In the long run, my net gain to the world will be greater if I can make that happen. I could code something really good that does X good for the world, but if I were able to coordinate 10 programmers to create something that does 10X good, that would be better. Even if they were only able to do 5X, that's still more than the 1X I would be able to do myself. They may separately create more value were I not to organize them, but I have no control over or guarantee of that.

I also like writing code, but at the end of the day, writing code is not what truly fulfills me - it's what my code does.

Opt to go down the Solutions/Software Architect route if you want to 'rank up' as it were.

I don't want to be a manager either, but career-growth in the form of being responsible for company-wide architectural decisions is appealing.