Agreed, and I hope that the three options presented by this author do not in fact constitute ineluctable destiny, because frankly, none of them appeal to me. I don't want to hustle for business and I'm not sufficiently obsessed with my work to become a "senior individual contributor". I've done some management in the past and I don't want to do it again, because humans are a pain in the ass.
I'd like to simply continue doing what I'm doing now, which is writing code for my employer, and mostly being left alone to do so. Can that not be arranged?
It can, and some companies are fine with that. The challenge is that even with companies that find that arrangement acceptable, many of them aren't willing to pay more for the relevant experience. They want you to be in some kind of higher leverage role. So either you take less pay, get pushed into more responsibility, or you get lucky with a really good company (and that company manages to stay in business without a major management/culture shift).
Become a contractor. You’ll pretty much be coding all the time. Don’t get scared by the business-management side, you can pick it up pretty quickly and then it doesn’t take up all that much time
