When you become a manager expect to train as a supervisor first. Ask or accept a salary hike as a supervisor that is half of what you expect as a full blown manager. Work your way to manager because if you don't have management experience on resume by the time you are 40 expect nothing but freelance work over the age 40 if you lose your job. Management experience is what separate the expendable labor from the non-expendable staff. Management sucks, I mean having authority is great but having to hire and fire sucks. It's a great deal of responsibility and needs to be taken seriously and to be good you really need to work hard at being empathetic, unemotional, and balancing risk versus reward at the risk of your own career. To not do so just means you are a riding a paycheck and not contributing a whole lot. I made the mistake of going for the job of doing things I enjoy, worked on a lot of really cool incredible projects for well known companies and found myself unemployed over the age of 40 without the ability to get an interview despite my knowledge and experience all because I was a go to guy who got the most complex jobs done but was not a manager. Don't be me. Be humble, tell your superiors you want to work your way up to management and spend time as asupervisor first so you can train in the role as someone who must manage people and deal with HR issues while not being a manager first. Set goals and mnilestones alonga timeline and make sure they are checked off as accomplishments in your reviews. You need to train as someone who has to get your staff to do what you want despite their personalities but not make decisions about the company. Being a manager means both. Once you become numb to taking a chance on employees and learning how to communicate or have crucial converstions (read the book Crucial Conversations) it becomes second nature to make business decisions and not get hung up on the risk. I'd say set a goal of being an entry elevel manager at the age of 35. By 40 tha would make you a skilled intermediate to entry level senior manager that every one repects because you've learned to master the skills.