Many big companies have a “technical career path”. This is a lie. Reality is that this is a path of slow regular promotion up to your “level of education”. BS e

Many big companies have a “technical career path”. This is a lie. Reality is that this is a path of slow regular promotion up to your “level of education”. BS ends at technical staff. MS ends at principal. PhD ends at fellow, and those are all management roles anyway. Doesn’t matter how good you are. Nobody is really that good anyway; success or failure will largely be assigned to you. My advice is to either go into sales for the best management ladder-climbing potential, or stop working and buy a cheap house somewhere nice after about 5 years.