Given role titles, it sounds like you are at Google and interviewing at Microsoft. In my experience, Microsoft is more aggressive at pushing you into management

Given role titles, it sounds like you are at Google and interviewing at Microsoft. In my experience, Microsoft is more aggressive at pushing you into management. Google seems to have more opportunity and culture of people working in a purely technical capacity to at least L7. At Microsoft, it felt much more like 65 was the glass ceiling. On the flip side, it also felt like managers at Microsoft were more involved in the technical decisions. This was my experience anyway. Others may have seen things differently.