All of this is possible without forced 1-1 walks with people I don't know. For example, Google has dozens of interest-based groups, some of which I go and part

All of this is possible without forced 1-1 walks with people I don't know. For example, Google has dozens of interest-based groups, some of which I go and participate regularly and positively (not going to give too many details here), and get plenty of gossip from that. I participate in several job-adjacent team chats, where I learn about projects and contribute where I can. One of my best interactions came from seeing an old teammate in an MK and they had a problem that we talked about. That was great and fun and interesting, and built plenty of social capital. But we had something to you know, actually talk about instead of make work. Not everyone wants to move up the hierarchy--doing perf as an IC is painful enough. Doing it as manager would make me want to stab myself. ICs become less and less common as the level increases.