There is so much interesting to unpack here.

He was down-leveled to a first level manager at the company you are at? He accepted this? Why? Do you think he / the new company chose wisely? What ended up happening?

I’m not sure why he accepted it, I never pried too much. It was his first big tech job.

He was a great manager, he’s since moved up the ranks but he’s still at the same big tech co.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was money. My family member runs a software company, salaries came up recently and found out I make as much as their director.

It is quite common for CTOs of smaller companies to be hired as team leaders into bigger companies; nothing wrong with that.

I agree. My point is this is probably unrealistic:

> It might be nicer to go work for startups, acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack, then get hired at a high responsibility position

You mostly don’t get hired into high responsibility positions at big tech from startups, unless you’re acquired by them directly.

It’s wrong if it’s a 500 person tech company. There are divisions in big tech which don’t have 500 people in them.

It depends on how many people he was in charge of. If he’s CTO of 500 people company where only 40 are engineers, you’re not getting past senior manager at faang.