I'm in almost the exact same boat, though I find that much of my job is in just predicting pitfalls, and in anticipating when things won't work.<p>As a federal contractor for an agency that prefers to use COTS/GOTS software, there is a surprisingly great need for having a developer that can look at a given piece of software, intuit how it works, probe its sales and development teams to say "Well, this claims to do Kerberos authentication, but it really does GSSAPI, and hence, won't work with your existing OpenSSO implementation."<p>I also code a lot, mentor other developers, etc., and yes, it IS a great role.