Companies like to claim this, but it's not the reality due to an imbalance in power between managers and IC engineers. A manager controls a reports salary, career progression, has more face time with VPs and so on. Software engineering is unique in that ICs can still scale to a similar level of impact as executives, but it is a mistake to think that a Staff engineer and Manager are equal in the eyes of the organization. They aren't.

A title bump without the reporting structure changes to go with it is just a fancy way to dress up a raise, sure, but that's not the only option.

In companies doing this well, the high-level engineer doesn't report to the immediate team lead, but reports to the same director that lead does. Or VP vs director for even-higher-level engineers vs higher-level managers.

That structure, more than the title, is what shows you if you're really on an equivalent track.

> Software engineering is unique

There is nothing special about software engineering as a technical track this way. There is no one way to set up an organization. To a large degree they are how they actually work (i.e. not what's on paper).

This balance has been an issue in managing technical teams for about as long as that has been a thing, which is a lot longer than software has been a thing. There is a fundamental tension though, in that the focus you need to maintain expertise in your field contends with the breadth you need to understand the context well enough to make good decisions.

I suspect the real reason that you don't see more of it in practice is that it's actually really hard to continue to do both well at a very high level, and it's also organizationally hard to do.

There is something special about software engineering because it is fundamentally about automation. As a result, an individual software engineer can create the sort of impact that traditionally would require a team.

I'm trying to make sense of the rest of your post, but it uses a lot of pronouns that don't appear to reference anything.

> fundamentally about automation.

I agree software has more leverage, sometimes but we are talking here about how decision making power is distributed in a company.

Regardless about how much impact the IC technical output can have that is about how. The skills & information needed to make good decisions about what and when are different.

Unfortunately, being highly effective at both requires spending time and focus in ways that are somewhat mutually exclusive, which makes this quite hard.

Once you start crossing the sr eng -> staff eng rubicon, you start doing more managmentesque things anyway. Maybe less 1:1s with specific reports, but you are definately talking to a lot of people and teams trying to lead the direction & design of what you are working on as a group.

I can't say I've ever been in a company where the path wasn't either:

Engineer -> Senior -> Principal -> Staff -> Distinguished

OR

Engineer -> Senior? -> Manager -> Senior Manager -> Director

In both scenarios though, they've been a more senior engineer.

I've seen people go from Engineer to Manager, skipping over, for want of better phrasing, the senior engineering ranks. In both cases it went poorly and a founders child was involved, indirectly at first and then later directly.

What do you mean a founders child was involved? Was that the person who skipped the senior rank?

One of the founders children was hired on to a low ranking managers team as an entry level Software Engineer. They were hired specifically by the low ranking manager and without the typical interview process. That low ranking manager, inside of a calendar year, became the director of an entirely new division in the engineering org. That division eventually went defunct, having never shipped a single product to production or having accomplished anything else of note.

The other was a founders child being promoted from SE I or SE II into a middle management role. That also did not end well.