4 ms·
The original article's title is: "Where do IC designers go once they peak?" (not sure why it was changed on HN), and it focuses mainly on the career path for de
by jonas21 7y ago
The original article's title is: "Where do IC designers go once they peak?" (not sure why it was changed on HN), and it focuses mainly on the career path for design.
For engineers, at least in larger tech companies, there's often a tech career ladder that runs parallel to the management ladder where you can have salary and responsibility growth as an IC without managing people. These ladders usually top out at a "distinguished engineer" or "fellow" level that's roughly equivalent to being a VP.
EDIT: added clarification about company size
- AaronM 7y agoBased on my experience, it doesn't seem that many companies outside of the FAANG companies have those kind of tracks. At a small company that builds a single product, what would a "fellow" actually do that is different than a senior engineer?
- jonas21 7y agoYou're right, the company needs to be of a certain size before this makes sense. But it's not just FAANG -- for example, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, Lyft and many others have similar tracks.
- scarface74 7y agoPeople are so stuck on the acronym that think of MS as less of a tech company than Netflix? Microsoft is much larger than Netflix no matter how you measure it.
- james_s_tayler 7y agoSo true. The reply is like "by these other huge famous companies have them too". Ok. That's great. How about the small product companies that have like 20 or 200 engineers as opposed to 2,000 or 20,000?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jimmyswimmy 7y agoProbably because there's a substantial minority of hardware engineers here for whom IC designer is a very specific job title. I have worked at and worth several companies which purport to have this parallel track. In practice there seems to be much less need for senior engineering and much more need for senior management. There may exist a parallel track but there aren't many positions on that track.