[summerlight]

> It is impossible to remain an individual contributor at Intel. This will last about a year. There are simply too many employees to maintain a flat hierarchy. People dream of this, but in reality, if you're really that good, you will absolutely become a manager, there's just not enough hands on deck.

This is right. In most big techs, even if you manage to "technically" remain as a individual contributor at a principal/distinguished level, but you're very likely going to lead/manage a bunch of technical projects which will effectively give you tens of informal reports. Even without external social pressures, I saw many people voluntarily choose to become a manager because it's nearly impossible to handle the workload.