The problem is that most companies have a small handful of such people, and lots of vice presidents. They want you to think it's equivalent, but the reality is that, Facebook and anywhere, there's only so far you can go on the technical track.
Exactly. Managers decide who is high level on the engineering side and also want to save money and have high management salaries. It's completely stupid to think that there won't be 500 VP's and 3 distinguished engineers in this situation, which is how it exactly is at the large tech companies.
Ideally, those should be in balance if the track are truly parallel.
Thus, if 1% of engineers are in the highest, distinguished level then 1% of managers should be in the highest managerial level. If those 500 VPs amount to 10% of all managerial positions then they should be comparable in impact and salary to all those engineers whose engineer contributor level amounts to 10% of all engineering positions.
Seems to me the solution to that problem would be to make the salary bands for engineers wider, so you can keep growing salary wise even if you pretty much cap out in terms of technical ability.
How would that be a solution? The problem is that managers don't want to pay engineers and would rather pay themselves, so everything else follows from that.
