Completely agree. The other big issue is that some companies do nominally have higher technical positions than "tech lead" but in practice the number of people in these positions is much lower than in "equivalent" management positions so it's still a much better career/financial move too get into management even though it's technically possible to have a similarly good advancement path staying technical. For example in the group under my director there are maybe 4-5 "Architects" but there are around 15-20 people in engineering management that are probably around the same "level". And even for the architects, afaik none of them are actually writing code. They seem more like technical advisors who are still in "management" but don't have direct reports.

It's kind of insane when I think about it, how at a huge tech company all of the people with a lot of experience who mostly did very well as engineers are making $400k-$2mm/year as managers while all the actual technical product (in terms of code) is being written by people with 0-15 years professional experience. Of course it's not that weird that managers make more than employees but it does seem weird that there are so few people with a lot of experience and successful careers actually working directly on the product.