Imagine being of IC7+ caliber and voluntarily deciding to jump on this sinking ship. I doubt such a person exists. Might be an opportunity to upsell yourself into an IC7[+] offer, though.
Not always. IC7-9 can make ~$800k-$1.2m TC solving tough, uninteresting problems with massive impact. Most ~IC8's come across as total assholes, which might be a requirement in some tech cultures.
Maybe. I know why I am not pursuing any non-IC role these days, which seems to be THE way to ridiculous compensation packages. I am not willing to put up with the stresses involved if I am to do it well. And that is before you get to dealing with the backstabbers, yes-men and obligatory birthdays. It gets old fast.
The other curse is to progress to IC7-9 (non manager) at MAANG making 500k-900k and unable to be hired anywhere else. The only place to go is to stay at a megacorp. Thankfully, some of these megacorps violate this article's "curse" rule and allow IC <-> M transitions somewhat freely.
It behooves IC7-9 to instead work on side hustles that can turn into profitable businesses, leveraging their employment pedigree and potential early adopters in industry, because working for a corporation is risky and plateaus.
Ahh, that's fairly straightforward. Join a rapidly growing organization and stand out as an IC. You'll inevitably be asked to take on a bigger role as the org struggles with leadership gaps as they expand.
The problem with dedicated IC career paths are that they aren't respected outside of core tech companies. At some point if you want to switch industries you could be looking at a massive pay cut. I noticed this in FAANG. Okay, you get to IC8, you're a master of the universe. Realistically you can only take that credibility with you to other FAANG. If you're a manager/director, you can take that with you anywhere and the comp bands will be more comparable.
There are of course exceptions if you are a true rock star and have worked on/led household-name projects as an IC. But again, if you jump ship, you might end up in a manager-esque role anyway. Once you reach a certain level of seniority/experience you are just way more valuable in the force-multiplying role of "leader" than anything you can do with your hands on the keyboard.
My understanding is that it is rare as compared to lower levels but far from impossible. The data points at levels seem to bear that out.
Whereas in some other, smaller companies there are perhaps one or two ICs at that pay level, they have been at the company for a decade, and hold all the tribal knowledge. No one ever gets hired into that type of position.
43, IC. Seems no problem to me carrying on as IC, can look to big companies for prestigious senior IC roles, or work at pre-IPO companies, so same choice as ever.
Where I work there's roughly one director per 100 ICs, so it's certainly not something that everybody can achieve. I'd also expect that it would be harder to switch companies as a director than an IC.
I just left a (non-engineering) role where I was a people manager of 7. It was great at first but I genuinely felt my skills atrophying, so I left to join a much smaller and flatter team.
I know HN is can sometimes come across as 'management-phobic', and having been on that side of the fence there is a lot value that can be added by managers.
That said, I do wonder how many of these managers who have been asked to become ICs might actually be relieved. In an increasingly competitive economic environment, some could see this as a good thing.
I've done it, I realized I wanted to keep being an IC but still have promo/comp growth opportunities, and only some companies do that well without requiring you to hop onto the mgmt path.
This is kind of the main problem. You should't have employees at IC2 if they are IC4 worthy. They will just try to find another job, instead of waiting 5 years before reaching a level of someone who is performing same or worse.
I'm not a scam, I like to believe, because I've always gotten good feedback from my teams. But definitely the job description is quite light and a bit handwavy, so all companies could use fewer engineering managers, not more. I myself would volunteer to go back to IC right now.
I envy you. I would probably pay money to give up my Sr. Manager position at FAANG managing multiple teams doing critical infrastructure work (or rather, trying to) to become an IC embedded developer.
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