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> IC is a commonly used acronym for Individual Contributor Its not though. Outside of hacker news I have literally never heard this term before, nor does it ma

> IC is a commonly used acronym for Individual Contributor Its not though. Outside of hacker news I have literally never heard this term before, nor does it make any sense. If I'd start talking about "Individual Contributors" to my colleagues they would all be confused wth I'm talking about and wondering what's wrong with me. Who even coined this stupid term, and why do we pretend we need a new name for "engineers"?

notacoward 5y ago
It has been around in industry for at least twenty years. Facebook is a bit unusual in using it as an actual job title, but it's by no means new. I remember talking about how DEC had a healthy IC track separate from going into management, and DEC hasn't even existed as a separate company since 1998.
- mst 5y ago
  It's certainly regularly used but of course 'regularly' and 'common enough you can assume your audience already knows it' aren't necessarily the same thing in practice, usually at the most inconvenient possible moment.
Izkata 5y ago
Even for someone like me who is on that track, it wasn't coming to mind when I saw "IC". I had no idea what it meant.
jq-r 5y ago
Exactly. And this "IC" thing is a good example of something they call a negative externality. Negative externality in this sense is when you have to pay/are affected by something you don't want like polluted air. The original author saved maybe couple of seconds to write "Individual Contributor" on the first occasion of the phrase, but made many people here spent many seconds trying to figure out (probably by searching the internet) on what that acronym means. This is especially pronounced in some companies where the acronyms might be understandable just to a few members of some team, and when when this is communicated to the wider company, it can cause even a greater confusion (as you cannot search for it online) and waste of time for such a small "irrelevant" thing. So in other words, it can be compressed a bit in: "why should I waste a little bit of my time, when I can waste everyone else's time". Or simply: it is disrespecting your audience. The original article beside that is quite interesting though.

notacoward 5y ago

It has been around in industry for at least twenty years. Facebook is a bit unusual in using it as an actual job title, but it's by no means new. I remember talking about how DEC had a healthy IC track separate from going into management, and DEC hasn't even existed as a separate company since 1998.

mst 5y ago
It's certainly regularly used but of course 'regularly' and 'common enough you can assume your audience already knows it' aren't necessarily the same thing in practice, usually at the most inconvenient possible moment.

Izkata 5y ago

Even for someone like me who is on that track, it wasn't coming to mind when I saw "IC". I had no idea what it meant.

jq-r 5y ago

Exactly. And this "IC" thing is a good example of something they call a negative externality. Negative externality in this sense is when you have to pay/are affected by something you don't want like polluted air. The original author saved maybe couple of seconds to write "Individual Contributor" on the first occasion of the phrase, but made many people here spent many seconds trying to figure out (probably by searching the internet) on what that acronym means. This is especially pronounced in some companies where the acronyms might be understandable just to a few members of some team, and when when this is communicated to the wider company, it can cause even a greater confusion (as you cannot search for it online) and waste of time for such a small "irrelevant" thing. So in other words, it can be compressed a bit in: "why should I waste a little bit of my time, when I can waste everyone else's time". Or simply: it is disrespecting your audience. The original article beside that is quite interesting though.