> plus it’s bad for ic morale because there is now no path forward for advancing our careers to the managerial level. Why would one want to advance to a level

> plus it’s bad for ic morale because there is now no path forward for advancing our careers to the managerial level. Why would one want to advance to a level that gets very rapidly shafted as soon as the s*it hits the fan? Just increase the programmers' comps to the same level of the managers' comps, if that low morale is actually about the money, and you've already solved half of the problem.