[slavapestov]

I think the number of years in your post is off a bit. In San Francisco, you become a senior engineer within 2 years, and after 5 years you're either expected to go into management, or retire to southeast Asia with your IPO money.

[ergothus]

Your summary is a bit outdated, I believe. While there is definitely a ceiling as the above poster added, the last decade has had a LOT of effort in improving options for non-management IC development. The big companies are realizing there is value in keeping strong technical people in technical roles.

You still have to improve your so-called "soft" skills, improving communication up and down the chain, and it does involve a reduction in actual coding time, but you end up more of a code manager than a person manager.

None of which says there isn't a struggle, but the world is very different than when I had a manager told me I could never expect a decent job if I stayed in coding.