I was once lost, but now IC
See what I diiiid there
There's a version of career success I chased for years without ever really questioning it.
You get good at your job -> you get promoted -> you people manage. Bosh. WINNING.
I believed that it was the only ladder available. In a previous role, I managed a talented, multinational team. I was good at helping direct their energy - the check-ins, the development conversations, the advocacy upwards.
The parts of my work that made me lean forward were always a little different. Building a framework that finally made a messy process legible. Seeing a cross-functional problem from multiple angles and knowing how to stitch it together. Walking into a stakeholder conversation and being the person in the room who understood the bigger picture.
Moving into my current role gave me the space to finally see that clearly.
Being a senior IC
The default career narrative is so deeply embedded that even people who intellectually reject it can still get blindsided by its echo (echo, echo).
And when you're not on that path (even if by choice), knowing you’re doing complex work; there's a subtle, persistent pressure to justify your seniority in terms the ladder can recognise.
Here's what makes this more complicated: a lot of the people on that traditional management track didn't really choose it either. Research suggests a whopping 82% of managers are accidental; promoted simply because they were good at the functional work. Whether they actually wanted to lead people was almost beside the point.
So we end up with a system where ambitious ICs feel pressure to become managers they may not want to be, plenty of managers who never intended to manage are in the role anyway, and we lose out on their functional talent - as well as the potential great managers who are less functionally-minded and get overlooked for it. Nobody wins!
I do work I am incredibly proud of. And still, occasionally: is it enough?
The personal shift
The shift came not from an internal epiphany but from a conversation with a senior leader last year who told me, plainly, that I didn't need a team to have the impact or the seniority I was building toward.
It sounds small… maybe even obvious, but when you have that internal echo (echo) it does help solidify your path forward.
The organisational shift
Organisations are flattening; driven by economic headwinds, AI-driven changes, and the need for agility. And as the hierarchy compresses further, the work of leading laterally, influencing without authority, and holding cross-functional context becomes not just valid but essential.
This shift is most visible in tech, where IC tracks are most mature. Staff engineers, principal engineers, distinguished engineers; entire parallel career architectures built on the recognition that deep expertise and horizontal leadership are as valuable as people management.
But the same shift is arriving everywhere else - layers are disappearing. Fewer managers are covering way more ground. The people carrying strategic context, and the ability to connect the dots across teams are increasingly the ones keeping things coherent.
The flatter structures don’t just create space for IC leadership, they depend on it.
Research
Zühlke wrote about how IC career paths break tried-and-tested career ladder conventions - and how, while ICs aren't managing others, they're often leading projects and influencing decisions through expertise in ways that are significant. The problem can be that significance doesn't always get named or rewarded.
The cost? Research from the 2026 Global Skills Index found that organisations with strong IC development programmes outperform competitors by 31% in innovation metrics and 27% in market responsiveness. The depth, lateral thinking, institutional knowledge, and cross-functional thinking experienced ICs bring is a competitive advantage. But it just doesn't always show up neatly on an org chart.
So what it means
For me, it looks like building things that make organisations work better. Seeing the connective tissue between strategy and execution and making it visible. It looks like influencing without authority, advocating for what would otherwise be missed, and developing frameworks that help other people make faster, better decisions.
The question isn't whether your career looks like that ladder. It's whether the work you're doing is genuinely creating value, building influence, and moving things forward. You don't need a headcount to lead. You need clarity, credibility, and maybe, sometimes, someone who sees it and names it back to you.
I'm writing this in case you need to hear it from somewhere else too :)
