The issue isn't the absolute height. The top manager (CEO) is going to make more more than the top IC, that's just obvious. The real issue is that management i

The issue isn't the absolute height. The top manager (CEO) is going to make more more than the top IC, that's just obvious. The real issue is that management is a pyramid but IC is ziggurat with, if you're lucky, an obelisk sitting on top of it. People like to point to the principal staff engineer or whatever, but there's one of them for every twenty upper-mid level managers making the same money. And all those managers can take their skills to another company, but if an IC guru leaves the company where he made his bones he's probably destined for consulting (at best). Consulting has its upsides, but that's no more for everyone than management.