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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

I've worked at a couple places that had the "dual track", where they claimed that engineers can get promoted just like managers. The problem is, to be a VP manager, you need to be a really good manager. To be a VP level IC, you need to be the best in the entire industry in your field.

So sure, you can accelerate just like the managers, but in reality it's far harder on the IC track.

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Yes, thank you! this needs to be said many more times. Everyone calls out parallel tracks but doesn't mention how much harder it is to move up in the IC track than in the mgr track. I wrote a similar response here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36697404#36700085

In my opinion, that is still fair. IC is a much more rewarding and enjoyable job for many, so it seems reasonable that there would be a lot more competition for the high-level IC positions.

If you're willing to put up with the organizational bullshit and politics, there's usually nothing stopping you from becoming a manager at those tech companies.

The "dual track" concept is already a significant improvement over "traditional" companies where the IC ladder usually stops short of the first level of management.

I would suggest that lots of people don’t think like you or share your values. Lots of people would rather spend the day talking and basking in the attention and respect that comes with their position.

That may be true. My impression was that people switch over to the management chain because it's easier to climb the ladder there, not because they inherently enjoy it more. FWIW, in FAANG, I've seen high-level ICs to be much more respected than equal-level managers.

That argument is sound if there are as many IC VPs as there are management VPs. Otherwise it looks like a convenient lie.

It's very difficult for an IC to achieve the same impact as a management VP commandeering thousands of engineers.

I would argue the average VP has negative to zero marginal impact. You could replace them with another random person and achieve similar results. Of course there are exceptional cases but my experience has been that most essentially just meddle with things they don’t understand or cause excessive churn by wanting to seem to be doing something.

Yes, because job A is more enjoyable than job B, we should expect people to toil more for less reward, and have higher expectations of those who do job A.

I'm not saying it's the way it should be, but in practice, that's what it is in capitalism. Just look at comedians, musicians, artists, or teachers.

The problem I think with IC lies in the "I". You can be an absolute rockstar but no matter how good you are the impact of a single person at the technical level in most cases can never reach the impact of a manager with dozens, if not hundreds, of people under them.

And I say this as an IC after a 20 year career.

Yes. That's essentially the principle behind scaling. Using more people. As an IC you are always limited, even if you are some sort of genius, sickness etc.

This is just a problem with how we measure a manager's performance. If you measure an IC's performance as "what that IC accomplished" and then measure a manager's performance as "the sum of what every IC under him accomplished" then of course, even a mediocre manager is going to look like he's had more impact than the world's foremost expert IC.

We should measure impact on the margin. The marginal manager adds zero value. Whereas that’s not true for ICs

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