> it's extremely common to see people well into their 40s who haven't made it to a manager role "You aren't a manager, therefore your career is a stalled-out f

> it's extremely common to see people well into their 40s who haven't made it to a manager role "You aren't a manager, therefore your career is a stalled-out failure" is a pretty outdated view. It's getting to be the norm for companies (at least in tech) to have parallel career tracks for managers and individual contributors. Principal/staff engineers at big tech companies have more responsibility and higher compensation than almost any of their management-track colleagues. I'll grant you that the very top position (CEO) is always a management role, though.