Yes. This is the main thrust of my point. If you spend enough time in threads on this topic here, you'll see people popping up complaining that there's no IC p

Yes. This is the main thrust of my point. If you spend enough time in threads on this topic here, you'll see people popping up complaining that there's no IC path forward without taking time away from coding and requiring building good soft skills. What I was getting at is that with few exceptions, no such path exists. You're 100% right that one doesn't need to go into leadership roles, and definitely not management roles, to get there. But one's hands on keyboard contributions will top out at some point and the only way to move the needle further is to do something else on top of that. I personally separate the concepts of leadership and people management. So to me, most paths forward start to enter the sphere of "leadership" one way or another. But this is just nomenclature, YMMV.