I'm a 24-year-old IT honours graduate, technically inclined, loved programming from high school. I started my career as a developer (as planned) but changed to a user experience role when the company I was working for at the time closed its doors after half a year. I took the new role to round out my skills, and because the hiring company was a large, stable brand. All said I've done well in the role, and have been with the company for nearly two years now. My original manager left the job a few months ago, and is now trying to headhunt me. Herein lies my dilemma.

I've wanted to get back into development for a while and was planning on making the move during the next few months. User experience is important to me, but I miss the satisfaction of solving technical problems, getting my hands dirty, and creating things. I started keeping a side project, a roguelike game, which I work on now and then. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to flesh it into an actual game, it's more of a line-of-sight demo right now.

The headhunt offer has come with a significant promotion into management, and a generous paycheck to match. Of course accepting this will likely leave me even less time to work on side projects. I think my concern stems from the six-months-to-a-year commitment of getting a new job. I would really rather not join only to burn bridges by leaving, but if the job proves unenjoyable, six-months-to-a-year is a rather long time.

So here is my question, in my shoes, would you continue in an area of work that is very well paid, but you do not particularly enjoy? Or try and hunt down a job doing what you enjoy at a place you'd actually like to work at, even lacking experience?