[throwaway082729]

Completely concur with this. After 10+ years in engineering management, rising through the ranks, I'm at a stage where I don't want to solve people problems anymore. I want to get back to coding or solve problems as an IC. Most companies will need only a handful of VPs, Directors and Managers but almost all companies will need software engineers. As a manager, one has to sacrifice becoming technical and competitive in the market or be the best in their field. Even if they are a really good manager, different companies have different expectations of their managers. Google might want pure people managers whereas LinkedIn might want managers that write code 60% of the code. It's just not worth it though some perks are really nice.