A promotion into managing people comes with dealing with people's ego and emotions and you have their compensation and well being tied up in it as well...
I've had some gigs where I've sorta shirked managing people - I hate dealing with performance reviews and the like. But I have liked mentoring people, so I've accepted dotted-line reports where the actual management responsibilities fall to my boss and I help people build cool things while leading some team that does that.
I think this is also a little easier when you're a little older. I was a ladder climber early on in my career. I'm older now, and in enterprise orgs, there are plenty of seasoned people. It's not obvious that you should be hankering after a title if you've otherwise established yourself.
This may bend differently in startups or hyper-growing orgs.
I’ve been a C*O many times in my career. Now I’m a IC. I have a strong salary and the directors in the last few companies I worked suffered more, and had more volatile continuity in their positions. The ICs can stick around forever. Not sure why I’d want to go higher in the kind of orgs I’m doing well in now. Someday it’ll be different, but for now... no promotions, thank you.