[thenerdhead]

> And also, the people who excel at all those management tasks, the ICs who would actually make great managers but don't want to do it? They make the best ICs. Literally a dream. They make my job so much easier in so many ways. Wouldn't trade them.

Ah the cliche Steve Jobs quote. Any driven person who wants to make change at an organization knows that they have to become a manager to scale. These are all day-to-day reasons that distract from why people get into the role in the first place.

[jnwatson]

At the current FAANG I work for, managers are so consumed by organizational overhead that there’s plenty of room for IC (ie staff engineer) to influence direction.

Not sure if this applies at the VP level.

[inhumantsar]

This is exactly why so many companies have staff+ levels in the first place. Managers are there to handle the people and politics which gives the ICs space to do the technical side of departmental leadership.