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Comment by ironchef | Hacker News Reader

Our teams at Tanium do something similar. There’s no pay bump to lead the group... and we have a number of folks who’ve led the a team and then went back to IC. It’s worked quite well overall; however, is a difficult position (sometimes leading north of forty folks)

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Not giving you extra money for it is probably the best role but how does one ever actually move up at this place in that case?

At least at many big companies, there’s a dual career ladder for ICs and managers, with equal pay across equivalent levels (e.g. Manager ~ Senior engineer, Director ~ Principal Engineer)

In general we hire folks who've already been peak career (think like MS premier field engineers for 15+ years), give them an amorphous organization to work with, and treat them like adults. People lift each other up and successes are celebrated. It's not really a place where folks want to be "senior executive vice president" type title BS. Comp is based on a cut of revenue which encourages teamwork like nothing else (every customer's problem affects you).

It's unique .. and not for most people probably.

I am wholly convinced that the reason terrible young shitbags (like myself) can join the army and end up doing very well is because the army does what seemingly no one else does, which is treating them like adults by giving them pretty huge responsibilities and holding them accountable.

It would probably not surprise you the number of vets we have working for us (or that "extreme ownership" is on the required reading list when you join)

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