I can attest to that 100%. I work at a medium-sized startup, but we've got leadership from Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, and MSFT so I think it's pretty universal.

I can attest to that 100%. I work at a medium-sized startup, but we've got leadership from Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, and MSFT so I think it's pretty universal. You can progress to a pretty decent level and pay as "the best programmer" up until a high senior role, which most talented folks hit after about 8 yrs of experience. After that, promotions start to depend on the extent to which you influence the direction of your group or even company, which is all about teaching and leading others. I think of it as three stages: * Learning: you may be good at completing well-defined work, but you generally need a mentor to guide and help you. in other words, the company at this point is investing in your growth. * Building: you are now self-directed and able to work independently, capable of being assigned a possibly ambiguous product requirement and being able to solve it yourself. * Leading: you are now at the point where you can be given a large, complex project with possibly ambiguous requirements and trusted to deliver. you can work with management to form a team, and can design the technical / architectural approach and break it down into smaller pieces which you can delegate to the rest of the team. And once you hit "leading", it will grow in scope.