> Being very visibly anointed by some VP helps, but that's essentially tapping into the exec's leverage - an illusion of IC influence.

Of course that’s the play. Even a lind manager can’t get major initiatives through without getting the buy in from their manager. When I was working for startups, the director (1st company I had influence at) and the CTO at the second had been convinced of my idea and gave me the authority to pull who I needed to get it done.

Fast forward past BigTech to where I work now - a third party AWS consulting company, after convincing the powers that be of the market, I had it escalated to be one of the companies initiatives for the year.

But more so in BigTech, promotions aren’t completely on your manager. At least at AWS you had to have recommendations by I believe two or three people one level ahead of you and it had to go through a committee.

From talking to a couple of L4s that I mentored when they were interns and when they came back, they were both complaining about the promotion process even though their manager supported them.

> the CTO at the second had been convinced of my idea and gave me the authority to pull who I needed to get it done.

But that mean those people have the power, not you. Without that formal power structure you wouldn't do so much work trying to convince these people, the formal power structure forces everyone to try to manipulate and work with it, even you.

So it makes it so much easier to do anything if you are that high up person, imagine that was you, now instead of having to convince these people to do it now you just do it.