Generally necessity of the company and organization - at a point you become one of the more senior engineers and your role starts to change from one of implementation to one of specification, mentorship, solving the hardest problems versus building everything yourself.
You help product and senior engineering decide how to build things, how long they might take, what features are hard to build and should be cut from the first version, etc. Usually this happens with more junior devs who will actually implement the feature; so it's collaborative and you help them get started with the project, get over any snags in the implementation, and eventually code review before shipping.
I think at this point you need to decide if you want to be more technical or handle the people side of things - think CTO vs VP Eng, the former tries to have zero or few reports while the latter manages senior engineering or engineering directors who might manage another tier of more technical engineers depending on the size of the org. These titles can mean different things in different companies, but I typically think of the CTO figuring out the tech strategy, and VP Eng thinking about the organization's strategy around recruiting and keeping talented engineers.
There is value in having both types of people, and companies should set up career tracks for both with similar salary and stock compensation. I wouldn't say they'll always be equal, but you'll end up doing well in either and you should probably optimize for what makes you happy -- leading the team technically, or from the management side.
Additionally I'll say some engineers think they need to manage to move up and they have a strong desire to do so; so much so, they'll bounce around between companies until someone gives them an engineering management job -- but they're often terrible managers lacking any empathy and only really thinking about their bottom line and not what's good for the team or organization.
You help product and senior engineering decide how to build things, how long they might take, what features are hard to build and should be cut from the first version, etc. Usually this happens with more junior devs who will actually implement the feature; so it's collaborative and you help them get started with the project, get over any snags in the implementation, and eventually code review before shipping.
I think at this point you need to decide if you want to be more technical or handle the people side of things - think CTO vs VP Eng, the former tries to have zero or few reports while the latter manages senior engineering or engineering directors who might manage another tier of more technical engineers depending on the size of the org. These titles can mean different things in different companies, but I typically think of the CTO figuring out the tech strategy, and VP Eng thinking about the organization's strategy around recruiting and keeping talented engineers.
There is value in having both types of people, and companies should set up career tracks for both with similar salary and stock compensation. I wouldn't say they'll always be equal, but you'll end up doing well in either and you should probably optimize for what makes you happy -- leading the team technically, or from the management side.
Additionally I'll say some engineers think they need to manage to move up and they have a strong desire to do so; so much so, they'll bounce around between companies until someone gives them an engineering management job -- but they're often terrible managers lacking any empathy and only really thinking about their bottom line and not what's good for the team or organization.