Sure if you want to make it to VP it’s very hard to do it as an IC. But then again it’s hard to make VP as a manager as well (outside of title inflation or working at a very small startup).

It’s just a numbers game. 50 engineers, 6 EMs, 2 directors and 1 VP.

The amount of meetings a VP attends is insane. That coupled with the diminishing marginal utility of money makes me question anyone who sets that as their explicit goal though.

It's interesting to get a glimpse of these things inside of major corporations. At a former (BigTech Co) employer, Staff Software Engineer was equivalent to Director. I was not well received when I pointed out that we had a few dozen Directors in the engineering organization, but we only had less-than a dozen Staff Software Engineers, and half as many Principal Software Engineers. It didn't take me long to leave after having these conversations.