[lumost]

There needs to be roles for pure ICs. In deep tech orgs, it’s almost impossible to get work done unless you have a bench of folks with domain expertise, comfortable on your software, and in tune with and guiding product direction. Diluting the core IC responsibility in these orgs with mandatory influence/scope guidelines is counter productive.

That being said, when I was in the role of a principal engineer at a major tech company - my ultimate responsibility was to get the project to success. What that meant on any given week could have alignment, coding, guiding, or reviewing.