There is a simple answer to the question in the OP. The objective of a company (with regard to salaries) is to pay everyone in the company the least amount of money that will keep them there and productive. It is how supply and demand connect. It is not applied perfectly but it is generally true and whenever you wonder why someone is paid what they are, just remember that.
Become a consultant.
Baron,
There are plenty of companies that value technical skills over management prowess. And not all companies pay their managers significantly more than their technicians. I make nearly as much as my very good manager who did have a similar job before he got promoted. (I think he gets the manager bonus package though, which brings him up a step - but he has to deal with my whiny co-workers - so he certainly earns it).
But I’ve been doing my IT job for fifteen years, have a broad business background, seven years of consulting and a managment gig under my belt.
You may have allowed yourself to be underbid when you got hired. Or you may have been hired at a point where their was a glut of your skills on the market (right now in most IT job markets, there is a glut of skills on the market). Be patient. Switch jobs a couple of times. Build your generalized knowledge (business knowlege, managment knowledge). Five years in the “real world” is nothing.
Consultants only are underworked and overpaid if they work for themselves. Ask a consultant at Accenture or A.T. Kearny who works 70 hour weeks and lives out of a suitcase if they feel the same way.
Techies always seem to think their programming skills are the be-all end-all of the business. The reality is that most programmers /engineers/accountants/etc can be replaced by another relatively easily. Technical skills are important, but they are only part of the picture. Without good salespeople to sell the product and without good management to lead the organization, all those Java and web programmers are useless.
Middle managers do not get paid that much. What is 30% -50% of a regular workers salary? Not that much when you consider that a director or CEO makes 4 - 400 times what an employee makes. The reason for that is simple. Low level managers are also relatively easy to replace. Finding a person who can lead 3-5 people is not that hard. Managing a department of 50 people or more is very dificult. In a big department or a large project, a manager can’t be everywhere at once. He/she still needs to be able to make sure the department/project is a success. If the project fails, who do you think gets blamed?
Even managing a small project is a lot more dificult than simply coming in and just doing your job. You have people rolling on and off at different points and they have diferent skill levels and personalities. You have to get these people up to speed so you don’t have to be constantly over their shoulder. You have make people want to come in on time and stay late. You have to deal with managers and clients who want to know why your behind schedule.
Now multiply all that for a company of 90,000 employees.
I didn’t work for myself and was underworked and overpaid.
But it was the late 90s. There were lots of overpaid underworked consultants.
This seems appropriate: recently in Slate, Michael Kinsley wrote An Ode to Managers. It is a nice description of what (good) managers do and why what they do is so valuable.