[LordHumungous]

> But sometimes all you need is to be able to assign someone to a specific project that isn't all that glorious or interesting or hard but is valuable and needs to be done by a certain time

There's a lot of business value in certainty. The value of the senior IC is the certainty that your business critical project will get completed correctly and on time. Sort of like how you want a good electrician to work on your house even if the job isn't technically that "hard".

[nilkn]

That's just a solid senior engineer, though. You don't need a Senior Distinguished Technical Fellow to come to your house for some electrical work. That's the person you have designing the electrical grid for a city of 5 million people.

I guess if you have a lot of title inflation things might be different. I've definitely seen places where a senior developer is pretty much anyone 2-3 years out of school who does a decent job but still requires supervision and oversight.

[LordHumungous]

That depends. For example my company we are trying to move all of our infrastructure to kubernetes, and we are trying to hire a very senior IC who can lead it.