[frontendbeauty]

> In every software company the people who are the most influential, and the best paid, are in management or sales.

I don't think that's necessarily true in Silicon Valley, where companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc. have parallel career tracks for individual contributor vs manager, with equal salary bands. I'm earning way more as a high-level IC than mid-leveled managers.

[broodbucket]

Excuse my ignorance, IC?

[patio11]

"Individual contributor", as opposed to management. i.e. for a software engineer, someone who ships code for a living rather than shipping Gantt charts/emails.