[meddlepal]

Don't sell yourself out for money unless you need to. Figure out the amount of money you would like to make then if your at not getting paid that at CurrentCo go find a darling SV company, unicorn, or a FAANG+Microsoft and switch to an IC role at one of those companies and get paid better.

Going into management for money is a terrible reason to become a manager...

Unless of course your goal is executive management... but that's very different from engineering management.

[rhombocombus]

I agree, and I think you should only go into management if you like managing. You can be a good IC and a good leader and a good manager, but more than likely you will be better at one or two out of those three.

[ghaff]

You're sort of arguing though that, if you don't want to go into management, you should become an extraordinary IC (or just accept you'll get paid less money).

[codegeek]

But that's true almost everywhere unless you become a consultant/freelancer (but then you are now running a business and have to find customers)

[ghaff]

Sure. Absolutely nothing specific to tech. In fact, many big tech companies have a much better IC career ladder, mostly but not entirely for engineers/devs, than non-tech companies do. Sales is the main exception I can think of.