//Funny how this lateral move to another function is seen as a promotion.

Not at all. IC salaries outside of the absolute top-tier companies are capped, and were traditionally always capped lower than any degree of Senior Management prior to the 2000s.

More to the point, they were capped illegally and in collusion with the main players in the game, completely separate from market forces.

This was ably demonstrated by the class action taken when five former software engineers sued Apple, Google, Adobe Systems, and Intel in a Federal District Court in California for colluding in an “overarching conspiracy” to keep wages low by promising not to poach each other’s employees.

https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon...

65,000 software engineers eventually claimed they were unable to jump companies for higher pay because of a series of non-solicitation agreements by the likes of Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Apple's Steve Jobs.

Outside of VC/PE funded American tech hotspots, this depression of salaries for IC roles still tends to be the case - particularly in Europe - for whatever reason.

Simply put, the promotion is in the remuneration; the lateral move in functionality is simply a required re-alignment of role and responsibility to meet the expectations of the 'Leadership' tier - something always distinct from original job function, be it in Sales, HR, or Engineering.

// but I'd bet your CTO is looking to shake-up the domain of staff developers more than management with the AI hype train.

Well that's a given, isn't it?

The contemporary CTO is looking for quantitative proof of productivity increases via Agentic AI adoption based on things like delivery cadence or SLAs. Management is a qualitative function, and guaranteed to be skilled in 'mapping' their role to the delivery of value and reporting such things upward anyway.

Engineering Management are there to make firm commitments and reasonable compromises around the ability to deliver features generally already committed to hard dates by either Sales or by virtue of external market forces. How this is achieved using social and political capital alongside Domain Knowledge is the distinguishing factor between an IC and a Technical Manager imo.

// Do soldiers respect the West Point grad that hasn’t or doesn’t do soldering?

Yes, just like an Office Hierarchy there's an expectation that they respect the Rank - based on the caveat that the Officer/Manager doesn't confuse Rank with Authority.

Also, to clarify some previous assertions, VP title is often needed to empower a given member of staff to sign contracts on behalf of the company in certain jurisdictions or configurations.

I mean they're the discount bus of the skies, designed for students and people on weekend breaks inter-EU. Avoid flying to Paris (Buvais) or certain other 'city' airports, keep your carry-on luggage within limits, and they're basically fine.

They've a safety record that's beyond reproach, and where else are you going to get flights for ~€50 across Europe?

If nothing else they disrupted a predatory pricing cartel. I'm old enough to remember when a flight England->Ireland or Spain->Portugal could be the guts of €300 or €400. Now we have a complete revision on pricing and it paved the way for multiple good budget carriers like Transavia.

Not to mention Michael O'Leary being an absolute rogue with his PR - particularly the recent spat with Elon Musk

https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/01/21/big-idiot-boost...

Generally speaking you can use the mobile website and add the QR based boarding pass to Google Wallet that way - but if you dig into the TOS you'll almost certainly find an alternative way to get a printed pass.

For example Ryanair, who went 'fully digital' last year and stopped accepting self-printed passes, will provide a free of charge boarding pass at the airport so long as you have already checked-in online before arriving at the airport.