[devnullbrain]

>Unfortunately, I also needed to unblock my team so that progress wouldn’t grind to a halt whenever I decided to work on a new feature. Eventually, I figured out that I couldn’t take on projects in the “critical path,”

This is a important lesson. As an IC, it's hugely frustrating to be blocked on your own work because the gatekeeper is busy working on something more important. If the manager is the only person you can trust with the important work, something is broken.

There's just not enough time in the day to do 8 hours of IC work if you're also responsible for reviewing 8 hours of work from N reports. You are a thread consuming a queue.