I appreciate the viewpoint. One thing to consider is that I think many people in the industry still don’t fully grok the “IC track”, and there is a perception t

I appreciate the viewpoint. One thing to consider is that I think many people in the industry still don’t fully grok the “IC track”, and there is a perception that you need to transition to management to really progress past senior. At FAANG this is obviously ridiculous, the staff/principal levels are visible and progression is clear. Another related concept is that there really isn’t much written on the subject of “what should I focus on improving” for senior engineers. In a big org you can look to the engineers at the next rung for role models, but at smaller companies there might not be many staff plus, and so the diversity of types of roles may not be clear. All this is to say that I think this advice is more useful to senior engineers at smaller companies, than it is for those at a similar stage in their career at extremely large companies.