This is interesting. During my last job search I talked to colleagues who had positions at Oculus and Tesla. Both of them talked about things being set up for e

This is interesting. During my last job search I talked to colleagues who had positions at Oculus and Tesla. Both of them talked about things being set up for either management or IC, but not both. I prefer to do some of both. Just management would lead to my IC skills getting rusty, which would mean that some of the management that I do would become more and more disconnected from current practices. Just being a high level IC can divorce you from determining the direction of your work. High level ICs who've never dealt with the realities of managing projects or programs can be frustrating to deal with since they may not understand why things can't always be done in the perfect way.