Comment by BigTTYGothGF

That was true for the old school hard tech companies (Hardware chips, Intel, IBM, etc)

Google and other adtechs are not hard tech, that's why they have so many managers)

An underappreciated reason for this is empire building: Someone needs to be promoted to Senior Director and one way to do this is to add a layer of management: Adding 5 headcounts that essentially do busywork makes it easier to advocate for why your org is very important and why you should be promoted.

A majority of the big corporations I've worked at this was the typical developer track.

- entry level dev

- senior dev (start being groomed for management)

- senior dev/leader (take on 25% management duties)

- manager - management track.

Once you're on a management track, you essentially are taken off of any dev work and then depending on how well you've networked determines how fast you move up the management chain. Some companies like Target, they groom and move anybody up relatively fast who they see any potential in.

The only exceptions I've seen in my career are either startups or medium sized companies where there is no management track. You're a developer from the day you're hired until you either get fired, laid off or leave the company.

When I was an entry level dev, I left three companies because they wanted to start grooming me to move up into management. I was way more into being a developer and writing code then managing people.