the idea that there's no path for ICs beyond management is insulting and degrading to the hard working creatives and engineers out there. Don't give up there's a place for you, you just need to look a LOT harder and in places you wouldn't expect. Play the numbers its a statistics game.
Oh this hasn't happened to me, I've been pretty proactive about interacting with both my direct manager and several levels above them, but I have seen it happen to other devs. Especially ones from east Asia who seem to culturally focus a lot more on doing a great job on N level tasks instead of focusing on N+1 level tasks.
the idea that there's no path for ICs beyond management is insulting and degrading to the hard working creatives and engineers out there. Don't give up there's a place for you, you just need to look a LOT harder and in places you wouldn't expect. Play the numbers its a statistics game.