I actually like the term as it seems pretty accurate to me and I don’t know if a more accurate term. There’s many types of “managers” who are actually individu

I actually like the term as it seems pretty accurate to me and I don’t know if a more accurate term. There’s many types of “managers” who are actually individual contributors (eg, sysadmin, project admin). When you get into principal engineer and architect titles, sometimes those positions manage people and sometimes they don’t. I think it also highlights how one version of contributor isn’t better than the others. Some people only produce value by being part of a team, some produce value by managing, and some produce value direct from themselves.