alt Hacker NewsIf that's what you're looking for you can find it in academia. Universities have no problem paying people to stay around forever without promotion.
Of course the pay won't be great, but the benefits are decent, PTO is usually excellent, and the work environment usually very low stress.
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Are we talking about the same thing?
The point of the terminal level rule is that there is a point, bellow which you are not actually contributing all that much more in output then it takes to supervise and mentor you. At some point you need to be clearly net positive. This generally means you can mostly operate on your own.
If it becomes clear you won't make it to that level, then something is wrong. Either you are not capable, or not willing to make the effort, or something else. Regardless, you get forced out.
In my experience, people who say this kind of thing about either industry or academia have usually worked in one, but not both.
FWIW, I'm starting to seriously consider this as a strategy that will allow me to get to retirement without completely messing up my health due to stress and burnout.
That said, there's something deeply wrong with our industry if that's the way we expect things to work. I never felt that teaching was my calling, but I might end up being forced into it anyway and taking up a job that someone with proper passion and vocation could fill. Why? Because my own industry doesn't understand that unlimited growth is not sustainable.
For that matter, "growth" is not the right word, either. We're all being told that scaling the ladder is the same thing as growing and developing, but it's not.