From what i know, top technical people who have cutting edge knowledge and skill set still get paid a lot (sometimes even more than their management counter parts). It really is a supply and demand problem for high skill set. The way i see it, the top 15% of developers (or any technical person) for that matter never have problems making money or getting jobs, but there is a large "middling ground" of developers who all think they belong to the top 15 % that fight over jobs, and think the reason they are getting screwed is because the world is unfair, when in reality, they are not as good as they think.
I think you can do both, management and technical stuff. Your mistake was to think that you had to choose one of them.