Titles and definitions

In an earlier post i talked a little about my thoughts on test manager and test team lead.

There is a underlying discussion here that I would like bring up.

Why is it that the career path for testers is usually to move on to become TM or similar?

And how come a TM or TTL usually gets better pay?

As I stated in the last post: to me a TM or TTL is a tester with some additional responsibilities and tasks. This usually mean that less time is left to actual testing, ie the value to the company/organisation might be less than for the regular testers within the team.

To me the most valuable person is the tester and the TTL is there to enable them to do their job.

So why is it that TM seems to be the way forward rather than becoming THE expert tester ?

Development have had a similar issue a few years ago when the path was: developer to dev team lead to project manager. Not sure if this still applies today. One can become a brilliant developer and get the recognition for it.

So why is it not the same in test?

Test as a profession might be a bit younger and has really come into its own in the last couple of years, while dev has a few decades to do the same.

It also might have something to do with the title, put manager there and the paygrade jumps.

But as said above a great tester will provide more value to the organization.

Maybe there is a need to better define Tester in order to better see the difference between A tester and THE tester.