This is a great observation. At Amazon it's quite possible to become an L5 manager after being an SDE II for a while, but most of the people who do find it very

This is a great observation. At Amazon it's quite possible to become an L5 manager after being an SDE II for a while, but most of the people who do find it very challenging. They don't have the organizational clout to get things done because nobody respects a manager at that level and because more senior technical folks will steamroll over your technical opinion. To be a successful EM there you pretty much have to have made it to SDE III before switching over.