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What exactly is an "individual contributor"? I'm confused. This term has come out of nowhere in the past 5 years, and it sounds like you're referring to someone

What exactly is an "individual contributor"? I'm confused. This term has come out of nowhere in the past 5 years, and it sounds like you're referring to someone who backed a kickstarter campaign. If this is the new term for "employee", I'm out. I can't stand that companies refer to their customers as "consumers".

fmajid 4y ago
Someone who does not manage others.
jldugger 4y ago
> If this is the new term for "employee", I'm out AFIACT, it's intended to distinguish between employees who manage people and those who don't. I.e. "the set of employees is the set of managers plus the set of individual contributors."
GrinningFool 4y ago
It's recognition over the last few years that the standard eng -> sr eng -> manager isn't actually a path that all engineers want, does not always suit the employee, and does not always benefit the company.
blacksmithgu 4y ago
Individual contributor means people who directly write code (individuals who contribute), as opposed to people who manage (managers and project managers).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
time_to_smile 4y ago
It all came from the industry wide shift to make sure that software engineers were even more just cogs in a machine that could be hot swappable. The growing concept of "IC" goes hand in hand with the increased focus on "leveling" for engineers, as well as the rise of delegating all product related decisions to the rising class of PMs. All of these create a structure in which every team, even across companies, starts to look more and more the same and any individual can be trivially swapped out for another with the same role and level. In the early days of the startup boom, ~2008, engineers at startups had a lot more control over the product process. Typical startups where a CEO with some general vision of the product and a knowledge of fundraising and a technical cofounder who would handle the real implementation of the product. CEO would make sure the company was health, CTO/tech cofounder would make sure the product was built. But this lead to a class of labor that was a bit too powerful. As you likely remember engineers used to contribute a lot more than purely churning through tickets. Today you can think of IC as a prefix to a more complicated part number: IC-SRE-4, IC-DEVOPS-2, IC-DS-6. Then you just have to find someone claiming to be the part and send them through a leetcode grinder to verify the build quality, then plug them in and go!
- astrange 4y ago
  Apple doesn't have PMs nor treat people that way, and has called non-managers ICs since approximately forever.
logicalmonster 4y ago
> If this is the new term for "employee", I'm out. Can you please explain what's that offensive about calling somebody an Individual Contributor? It's a little bit of weird jargon, but it acknowledges 2 important things (they're a person, and they're actually working) which is infinitely more respectful to the people that actually do the work than "Resource" that also gets used. To me, using the word "Resource" to refer to people is by far the most dehumanizing term I've seen seriously used in an office.
- benjiweber 4y ago
  Individual Contributor is problematic in that it implies that contributions are primarily made by individuals rather than team efforts. It also implies that manager roles are not contributing which is also often not the case. It's quite individualistic. Much like "talent" which is the latest attempt to imply people are resources without using the word resources.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    > it implies that contributions are primarily made by individuals rather than team efforts > It's quite individualistic. A team always exists, but humans are not exactly the Borg. I think it's ok to recognize that individuals with differences exist. Feel free to dislike the term individual contributor if you want to though. That's your right as an individual contributor to HackerNews.
moosedev 4y ago
(Not directly answering the question asked, because sibling comments already did.) FWIW, I've heard and used it in FAANG for well over a decade. Usually I see HN comments using "IC" followed by someone asking what "IC" stands for. Makes a change to see someone asking for an expansion of the expansion :)

fmajid 4y ago

Someone who does not manage others.

jldugger 4y ago

> If this is the new term for "employee", I'm out AFIACT, it's intended to distinguish between employees who manage people and those who don't. I.e. "the set of employees is the set of managers plus the set of individual contributors."

GrinningFool 4y ago

It's recognition over the last few years that the standard eng -> sr eng -> manager isn't actually a path that all engineers want, does not always suit the employee, and does not always benefit the company.

blacksmithgu 4y ago

Individual contributor means people who directly write code (individuals who contribute), as opposed to people who manage (managers and project managers).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

time_to_smile 4y ago

It all came from the industry wide shift to make sure that software engineers were even more just cogs in a machine that could be hot swappable. The growing concept of "IC" goes hand in hand with the increased focus on "leveling" for engineers, as well as the rise of delegating all product related decisions to the rising class of PMs. All of these create a structure in which every team, even across companies, starts to look more and more the same and any individual can be trivially swapped out for another with the same role and level. In the early days of the startup boom, ~2008, engineers at startups had a lot more control over the product process. Typical startups where a CEO with some general vision of the product and a knowledge of fundraising and a technical cofounder who would handle the real implementation of the product. CEO would make sure the company was health, CTO/tech cofounder would make sure the product was built. But this lead to a class of labor that was a bit too powerful. As you likely remember engineers used to contribute a lot more than purely churning through tickets. Today you can think of IC as a prefix to a more complicated part number: IC-SRE-4, IC-DEVOPS-2, IC-DS-6. Then you just have to find someone claiming to be the part and send them through a leetcode grinder to verify the build quality, then plug them in and go!

astrange 4y ago
Apple doesn't have PMs nor treat people that way, and has called non-managers ICs since approximately forever.

logicalmonster 4y ago

> If this is the new term for "employee", I'm out. Can you please explain what's that offensive about calling somebody an Individual Contributor? It's a little bit of weird jargon, but it acknowledges 2 important things (they're a person, and they're actually working) which is infinitely more respectful to the people that actually do the work than "Resource" that also gets used. To me, using the word "Resource" to refer to people is by far the most dehumanizing term I've seen seriously used in an office.

benjiweber 4y ago
Individual Contributor is problematic in that it implies that contributions are primarily made by individuals rather than team efforts. It also implies that manager roles are not contributing which is also often not the case. It's quite individualistic. Much like "talent" which is the latest attempt to imply people are resources without using the word resources.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > it implies that contributions are primarily made by individuals rather than team efforts > It's quite individualistic. A team always exists, but humans are not exactly the Borg. I think it's ok to recognize that individuals with differences exist. Feel free to dislike the term individual contributor if you want to though. That's your right as an individual contributor to HackerNews.

moosedev 4y ago

(Not directly answering the question asked, because sibling comments already did.) FWIW, I've heard and used it in FAANG for well over a decade. Usually I see HN comments using "IC" followed by someone asking what "IC" stands for. Makes a change to see someone asking for an expansion of the expansion :)