Comment by malfist

They're not completely different fields. Staff engineer and above is unobtainable without some of the leadership skills a manager needs. There's a lot of soft skill overlap between high impact ICs and management.

I like to think of it as a manager isn't required to have technical expertise, it can help, I can hurt, but they have to be a leader. Junior and mid career are required to have technical expertise, but not required to have leadership, though it would certainly help them be high impact and thought leaders in their space.

The more senior I get, the more like a manager I am. Less hands on, more coaching, guiding, teaching and setting direction. Meetings and docs become my tools less than code. When I'm writing code I'm only increasing the output of one person, me. Everything else is force multiplication. I just don't have to do the bullshit performance management.