So I personally am out of the rat race, I’m already the highest level of IC at my current company (IC5) and no longer playing the game.
But, the cynical take and the one I would advise anyone to take who wanted to maximize their compensation and was early career is that you work to exchange the maximum compensation for your labor to exchange for goods and services. “This type of developer” is the only one that gets ahead in BigTech or adjacent companies.
Does that make it any better even if it is true? (And I don’t think that it is as true as you make it out to be, e.g. it’s not true for my medium-sized organization)
Just because it’s good for “career optimization” does not make it less of a strange mindset to view your colleagues as predators. The article also puts all of the blame on the so-called “predators”, when it should be blaming the organization’s culture and leadership if helping others is viewed in this way.
And in tech, unless you work for the relatively few medium side companies that pay in the range of BigTech, you don’t optimize your career by working in medium size companies.
But the author is very explicit about who the predators are - PMs from other teams who use back channels to ask you for help and other non junior developers who ask you to troubleshoot or do work without doing any research themselves.
But, the cynical take and the one I would advise anyone to take who wanted to maximize their compensation and was early career is that you work to exchange the maximum compensation for your labor to exchange for goods and services. “This type of developer” is the only one that gets ahead in BigTech or adjacent companies.