[bethling]

Having been a Senior IC and a Manager at a couple of big companies, I agree that that promotion is probably easier as a manager, but I worked with orgs/teams that had multiple senior staff/director-level ICs, but only 1 senior manager, director, etc. M1->M2 is possible managing a single team, but often M3 isn't. As long as the senior manager/director is there, you're not going to get promoted.

On the other hand, I've worked hard to get IC's on my teams promoted up and out of my team because good directors rely on their Sr. Staff/Prinicpal engineers so there's room for them to grow (even if it's difficult).