Normal? As far as I can tell, yes. I'm about 3 years into my own career, but as far as I can tell from basically every career conversation I've had, that seems

Normal? As far as I can tell, yes. I'm about 3 years into my own career, but as far as I can tell from basically every career conversation I've had, that seems to be the way for larger companies, and seems to be the well-defined path. As a side note, this appears to be the way for many other technical careers as well. For example, I know a prototyping engineer that bemoans a similar path. The more responsibilities you have, the more you delegate, and it snowballs. As for "ok", that's entirely up to you. If you enjoy it and find fulfillment, then I think it is. I have a co-worker who's been with the same team for around 10 years, is at a manager level, but is perfectly happy to stay at the individual-contributor role. It's really about where you find the joy. As for switching to another job, you probably wouldn't go through the LeetCode stuff, if you didn't want to. You'd likely move straight to manager, where your skills are currently. I imagine they'd be smart to not waste your time and just look at your resume.