Management track is usually the only way to be in the room where decisions get made. Sure, the top engineers will be consulted and kept in the loop, but 99% of the strategy discussions and planning happens without them.

So for people with an innate need to join in the steering of the ship, there’s only one career path.

My org of 500+ has 4 groups in it. Our annual plan had 16 major priorities, 4 of them came from me (a PE, most sr eng) directly or initiatives I pulled forward. I was in the deep meetings for my direct group. I had many discussions for the 2 ideas in other groups (one was easy actually). I'm not sure how that would rate as "excluded". I gave comment on all of the org plans and priorities in the groups (many of them have a lot of priorities I'm not spun up on yet as they're well covered or out of my wheel house). I sat in the final reviews. I'm in the promo / rating meetings. Only thing I'm really not in is the budget meetings and ceremony goal reporting meetings except when needed. That seems like a plus.

This is your experience and it doesn't prove anything. I mean, the above comment clearly said "usually" and most likely that's the case. At least, from what I saw. There may be one engineer for 4-5 managers in the group.

Top engineers should be in the room.

Yes, they really should.

> So for people with an innate need to join in the steering of the ship, there’s only one career path.

Not really. Some managers are perfectly willing to include IC's in this if they don't want to be/are not suitable as people-managers.

There are ways to formalize this, like creating roles for tech-leads, technical project management, enterprise architects (and a lot of others, in non-tech industries).

For managers who have their strongest talents in the social/organizational domain, this can be a win-win, if their ego allows it. In some cases, nearly all the technical and strategic work can be done by the IC, while the manager can focus on ensuring funding and support for these strategies within the organization, as well resource management and HR related work.

Of course, for every IC that has the talents and interests that make them suitable for such influence, there may be 3-4 that want that power, but do not have the abilities, initiative, flexibility or willingness to put enough effort into it to make it worthwhile for the manager.

And from the other perspective. If you're such an employee, it may be that you need to look around a bit to find a team lead by this kind of manager. It may well be that only 10-20% will be into this kind of cooperation with a subordinate.

But if you do find the right manager to support in this way, and actually do contribute to his/her getting promoted more quickly, you may have a powerful ally among the higher-ups (or even in some cases be pulled along, and given some direct-report role directly under him/her).

This is the problem I’ve been wrestling with. I’m never going to get the control I desire, unless I give up on benefiting from that control. I can’t advocate properly for myself as an IC, and even as a lead or staff engineer I’m still likely to be coaching someone who goes to the meeting instead of going myself and having much gravitas.

Only at very small companies do I get to cross these streams.

Is it possible to do both?

I hear senior VPs like Craig Federighi, Jeff Dean, and others, still write code (maybe 1 day a week but still), but also call the big shots

I don't know about Jeff, but Craig runs an org with tens of thousands of engineers. If he were writing code, it'd be a waste of time.

(and Craig doesn't waste his time)

Jeff Dean also eventually managed a huge org (Sanjay Ghemawat managed to avoid this)

It's not a waste of time if it makes them more effective at making decisions, gives them ideas, or keeps them abreast of what is actually going on.

Ideas, staying sharp, keeping up with swift and pytorch etc… sure, absolutely useful to code on weekends or a bit here and there.

What I meant what that there’s literal zero way someone can be an SVP and still perform any actual IC work.

I interviewed for FB once and I don’t believe this is the case there. I was told the comp levels ran parallel for ICs and Managers. They do value their ICs it seems. This was one of the main reasons I was interested in working for them. You can see it on levels.fyi

The levels are parallel but it’s easier to get promoted to level 6+ on the management track.

There is M1 and there is M2, and then there's Director. There's no level 6+ on the management track. I'll disagree with this statement by saying that I think the step function in skills between managing people and managing people who manage people is huge. There are larger gaps between M1 -> M2 -> D than IC6 -> IC7 -> IC8...

but, I think the answer depends. If you are a really strong individual contributor, I presume getting an IC promotion is easier. If you are just decent, getting an IC7+ promotion seems incredibly challenging because IC7 requires an very high level of competence. If you are just decent as a manager, you can get luckier.

It me. I’m a good Dev but was never going to be one of the greats. Making the jump to manager seemed like the next logical step… and in sone ways it has been, but it’s a very different job. (Now that I evaluate other people’s dev work, I was actually a lot better than I thought I was)

I've noticed that many of the best devs are constantly worried about their output and quality and the worst not worried at all. This is as a Sr. IC who gets pulled in to other teams on the regular.

> There is M1 and there is M2, and then there's Director. There's no level 6+ on the management track.

M1 corresponds to the same pay band as IC6 and M2 corresponds to IC7. D1 corresponds to IC8. (By level 6, I am referring to IC6 / M1.)

M1 is indeed the same level as IC6 at Meta

This is the case in my company. My boss reluctantly went to the manager track as it was quite difficult to move up on the SDE track (from the level he was on) but much easier on the manager track.