You have two things you can control: your impact to your company, and the company you choose to impact.
Step 1 is focusing on impact.
Be a profit centre not a cost centre. Know your customer. Know from start to finish how your company finds customers, makes them aware of your solution, and delivers value and in the end how you get them to pay for it.
Twiddling bits and bytes is the “how” of delivering value.
Focus on the what (job you customer is trying to do)
and the why:
(why does your company exist, what problem does your customer have, how do they meet in the middle and create value for everyone)
An engineer who can help the product management discover the right problem is infinitely more valuable than an engineer who can solve hard problems if they are just told what to do.
Get good at delivering value and find a company you are happy delivering value with
it reads more like you're bitter because he exposed the simple formula for success in a modern corporation and you're gatekeeping ICs from seizing this opportunity
I don't think the person you are replying to was gatekeeping ICs, BUT I have seen a lot of gatekeeping up and down the corporate hierarchy. I've had a high-level manager directly tell me, "Oh, you don't really want to be a Manager, and definitely not a Director. It's so much work and responsibility. You should be happy being an IC!" I'm not sure if he drove away in his Porsche 911 after that, but I'll choose to remember it that way.
Very Huxley. Almost exactly like: "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas."
You have two things you can control: your impact to your company, and the company you choose to impact.
Step 1 is focusing on impact. Be a profit centre not a cost centre. Know your customer. Know from start to finish how your company finds customers, makes them aware of your solution, and delivers value and in the end how you get them to pay for it.
Twiddling bits and bytes is the “how” of delivering value.
Focus on the what (job you customer is trying to do)
and the why:
(why does your company exist, what problem does your customer have, how do they meet in the middle and create value for everyone)
An engineer who can help the product management discover the right problem is infinitely more valuable than an engineer who can solve hard problems if they are just told what to do.
Get good at delivering value and find a company you are happy delivering value with