>Came back to coding after being "promoted" to a management position, and why?

I did. And I was the co-owner and co-founder of the company. My partner promoted me from just programmer into chief of software. I went back to my old position after a few months. My extra duties as a chief were to write a weekly plan/schedule/time guesstimate, check how and when were things done, and at the end of the month suggest who'd get some extra money and who'd get a negative extra. My partner, being the CEO, would decide on my salary.

The downside of this was 1) the endless wrestling with the "when will X be done" question, and 2) knowledge that the salary was a lump sum I had to divide between the guys. If one was particularly good this month, should others be receiving less than usual because they were just normally good? And I also thought that my only source of authority should be my knowledge and skills, not the title of my job. And I accepted the old salary without regret.

And there was the insult in it as well. I was supposed to be done with my bossing duties in about two hours a week (which was true), and those two hours have got me a salary increase of 33%. Which meant that one hour of bossing is equivalent to 19 hours of programming, IOW bossing is paid 6.33 times better. That's an insult to programming, IMO, and I haven't forgiven my partner about that yet. Though this ranks as only #11 reason why I'm here and not there, it's still on the list.