Is it me or do attempts to generalize career development across companies seem futile?

The concrete example here I can give is working at one company where "Manager" meant you had 10+ direct reports and were expected to do almost no technical work. Versus a second company where "Manager" meant you had 4-5 directs and were doing significant amount of technical work. The path from IC to Manager at company 1 had almost no commonalities with company 2 despite similar-sounding titles.

I guess what I am saying is that promotion ladders are so tightly integrated with company norms that attempting to seek outside advice on "how do I get to the next level" seems useless.

Edit: To rephrase more succinctly - Are articles like TFA useless or do I not know how to interperet them?