Key Takeaways

  • Elena Verna surveyed 51 people managers and found that 42 of them would rather return to an individual contributor role if their compensation remained identical.
  • Traditional tech ladders force skilled builders into management solely for salary and status, creating reluctant managers who produce poor team environments.
  • AI tools like Lovable allow individual builders to ship complete products and growth loops without coordinating large teams.
  • Organizations must create High-Impact Individual Contributor (HI-IC) bands with pay parity or pay premiums over engineering and product managers.
  • High-impact IC compensation requires leadership-grade accountability, meaning builders own revenue and business metrics directly.

The Reluctant Manager Trap

For decades, tech companies offered only one path to higher pay: managing people. If an engineer, designer, or growth specialist wanted a raise, they had to accept direct reports, run weekly one-on-ones, and step away from the craft.

This structure created a predictable failure mode across tech. Professionals who loved building became managers purely for the money, leaving companies full of managers who hated managing.

“Decoupling pay and status from headcount. This one is important. It is so ingrained in us that if we want to get more pay, we have to get promoted to manager to director to VP,” Verna explains. “Otherwise everybody rationally becomes manager and there's managers everywhere and most importantly there's lots of terrible managers everywhere cuz all of us had one through our career.”

Verna tested this dynamic directly. In a survey of 51 active people managers, 42 stated they would instantly return to an individual contributor seat if their pay and title prestige did not drop. The management track was not their passion; it was their only financial choice.

The High-Impact IC in the AI Era

The emergence of AI tools removes the operational need for massive teams. An experienced builder using software like Lovable can build, test, and ship features that previously required five engineers, a designer, and a dedicated project manager.

Because solo builders can now create outsized business output, the justification for paying managers more than builders disappears. When Verna transitioned to a High-Impact IC role, she kept her executive pay band. She argues that top builders should earn more than managers:

“When I moved into my high C, I did not have a change in my pay grade. In fact, I believe that if we truly believe into this AI change that is happening in all our lives, then IC's should get paid more than managers because as an IC, you can drive more outcome and impact than the manager in the old system.”

This compensation model requires a new standard of accountability. You cannot pay someone a vice president salary to pick tickets off a backlog. As Verna notes: “And if you want to attract those people, be expected to actually pay them those leadership level salaries. But do expect a leadership level outcomes out of them as well.”

What to Do With This

Send an anonymous one-question survey to every manager in your company this week: "If your salary and equity stayed identical, would you prefer to stay in management or return to an individual contributor role?"

For the managers who want to build, establish a High-Impact IC track matching your current director or VP pay scale. Transition them out of people management, assign them direct ownership of a single core business outcome, and give them modern building tools to execute alone.