Idk. I consider myself a pretty good engineer (received exceeds expectations / max rating at every company I’ve worked at) and I made the salary cap for my level at each level. I make more than EMs.

When I tried being a manager I was told that they felt the team slacking without me doing the heavy lifting just 6 months in.. so I went back to being a team lead.

I’ll be honest out of a dozen plus managers in my career only 3 stand out as memorable. 2 of them are among my best friends today. Everyone else was forgettable at best or incompetent, but they got me my money which I care about more.

Now I’m starting my own company. There’s no challenge left for me technically speaking because I want a challenge that I can’t figure out easily.

Don’t worry too much about being managed by younger people or whatever. Who cares.

If you are working for someone else, and you do not have significant equity (99% chance you won’t - even getting 1-2x salary in RSU isn’t significant imo when we are talking about 1 trillion plus market cap)… just get the max money you can and enjoy life.

Stressing about this is a waste of energy. Trust me.