[facet1ous]

Yes, absolutely this. Once you hit senior ranks in engineering at a big tech firm, it's actually very difficult to move upwards. Very few people are ever made principal engineers or senior staff or even staff level for that matter. The jump in technical ability for those levels is quite large as well and can take many years to get a single promotion since openings are pretty slim as well (some orgs will only get 1-2 staff engineers).

If you switch to becoming a manager, your salary increases a lot and you have many more opportunities for promotion. So a lot of engineers hit senior and say "screw that, I can just be a manager" which is a much easier path to high salary.

It's very common and we need to incentivize people to stay as ICs.

[lumost]

I really don't understand this pattern at companies. It seems entirely feasible to simply let IC's take on more responsibility. It's easier to shuffle responsibility amongst ICs compared to managers without rocking the boat - why would orgs incentivize a "fixed" management structure?

[awa]

It creates the problem of too many chefs but too few cooks. Too many people discussing how to best construct a thing vs actually constructing the thing.

[Aperocky]

> many more opportunities for promotion.

Feels like this is generally true in the past few years where org sizes have ballooned.

Is this still true today where hiring freeze and layoffs rule most of these companies? Is the reverse happening?