I have found EM positions (where you lead a team of 4-8 and your reports are ICs) to be way more stressful and don’t really pay much more. VPEngineering is wher

I have found EM positions (where you lead a team of 4-8 and your reports are ICs) to be way more stressful and don’t really pay much more. VPEngineering is where you get a meaningful pay increase. In addition you need to keep up with the tech as you need to evaluate the skill level of people in your team plus they turn to you for advice. And it is way more tiring. Keeping up with what many people are doing, at a technical level, plus all the people related stuff, bureaucracy etc. Needing to attend lots of meetings and sync up. I agree it has a better career path for most, because technical career paths tend to either require a FAANG or maybe a ThoughtWorks or just massive IQ and effort to learn something like C++ HFT to rake it in. Or maybe be a sales engineer or growth engineer. Or founder.