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It has been in common use for at least 15, if not 20 years. Very common phrase in the tech industry.
by com2kid 4y ago
It has been in common use for at least 15, if not 20 years.
Very common phrase in the tech industry.
- zabzonk 4y agoi have worked in tech for over 40 years at all levels and, as i said, i have never come across the term before today.
- com2kid 4y agoJust in the past week "IC" has appeared in 2 front page stories on HN. Are you US based? Beginning my career in the mid 00s I was exposed to "IC" pretty much day 1 starting at Microsoft. Other people around me in adjacent sectors also use the phrase to refer to non-managers, it is pretty common daily parlance, I am 99% sure I can ask any of my knowledge worker friends and they'll know what I am talking about. Google trends show "individual contributor" has been a pretty popular phrase since at least 2011.
- zabzonk 4y agono, i am not us based, though i have worked there. but so what? is "knowledge workers" still a thing? it was meaningless when it was introduced in the 60s, even more so now. another bubble creature, i guess.
- com2kid 4y ago> no, i am not us based, though i have worked there. but so what? Every country, and even different regions of a country, has linguistic differences. This is true even if all the countries being talked about have the same national language. For example, nobody in the US tech sector is going to know what a Boffin is unless they read The Register. Even on the west coast of the US, vocabulary is different between California and the Pacific Northwest, although things started to merge together when the Silicon Valley based tech companies began opening offices up in Seattle.
- zabzonk 4y agoas a matter of interest what, as vaguely as you like, do you work on? because you seem uninformed to me and it is not obvious to me that you know what you are talking about. there is one tech giant that has always been based in seattle. well, make that two.
- newfriend 4y agoYou seem to be the one who is uninformed, considering you've never heard the term IC. Yes, everyone knows there are two tech giants based in Seattle. What this person was saying is that other large companies have also opened/grown Seattle offices in the past decade and vice versa, which has caused usage of corporate vocabulary to merge. Maybe you should reflect on the fact that you don't seem to understand what people in this thread are talking about and stop acting like you do.
- solarmist 4y agoNaw, knowledge workers have developed into a real thing. The labor group that requires significant creativity and autonomy to be effective. The artifacts they create are a minority of the value they create. Mostly they became a real thing because traditional management techniques fail to work well with knowledge workers.
- zabzonk 4y agoyou said 20 years, now it seems to be down to 12
- throwawaylinux 4y agoBy "tech industry", a lot of people here tend to mean internet ad companies and/or startups designed to be acquired by them.
- lelanthran 4y ago> It has been in common use for at least 15, if not 20 years. I've been in the industry since 1998. The first time I saw it was on HN a few years ago (maybe 3 or 4).
- operatingthetan 4y agoI just searched HN and found references 12 years ago.
- lelanthran 4y ago> I just searched HN and found references 12 years ago. Hah! I would just love to see that thread - may it is also filled with "What's an IC?" :-)