Ctrl-Alt-Delete: The Planned Obsolescence of Old Coders

As an alternative to the management track, Google, Microsoft, and other large companies define an “individual contributor (IC) track,” a ladder of job titles for senior engineers that rises in parallel to the management ladder. Based on interviews with a half-dozen programmers, it is clear to me that companies should create a qualitatively different role for their most senior individual contributors. Proven engineers who occupy the most senior roles should be deployed to solve the hardest problems on the most critical projects.

Source: onezero.medium.com