I hate the term "individual contributor" how else does anyone contribute but ind...

theevilsharpie · 2026-03-29T06:26:33 1774765593

A lot of professions have terms of art that can be interpreted incorrectly or be viewed as odd by laymen. "Individual contributor" is no different.

Maybe it sounds weird to you, but it's a well-understood term in the management profession.

gfody · 2026-03-29T06:58:37 1774767517

it's a bullshit term because a managers contributions are also individual and the kind of contributions (implied to come from non-individual contributors) also come from individual contributors

justonceokay · 2026-03-29T11:07:37 1774782457

ICs are given tasks for one person. Managers are given tasks to distribute to entire teams. By definition managers do not contribute individually because their output (from an org chart perspective) includes the output of everyone reporting to them.

gfody · 2026-03-29T14:27:55 1774794475

see how the language lead directly to you considering all contributions to belong to the manager? yea newspeak is bad for the brain!

justonceokay · 2026-03-29T15:16:48 1774797408

Your manager is on the hook for things you do. I can’t explain it more plainly

gfody · 2026-03-29T20:01:55 1774814515

regardless of who is on the hook for what, ones contributions are their own. a manager makes contributions by performing actions just like anybody else. this label for implying that a managers contributions includes that of their reports is bogus - if a manager does absolutely nothing at all we should consider the contributions of their reports? actual technical jargon adds precision to language "IC" takes it away, it's nothing more than corporate newspeak ala 1984