Yea this is maddening. “We can’t pay you anymore because The Book [1] says we can only pay people at your level from $X to $Y and you’re at Y. We can’t promote you because you are at the highest individual contributor level. And we cant make you a manager because you’re on a 2 person team and there is nobody to manage.”

“OK So I guess I need to leave.”

“Why oh why can’t we retain our talent????”

So ridiculous. You need an IC career track that is rewarding and achievable.

1: yes, they actually pointed to a physical book that described some industry standard of what software engineers must be paid.