[otras]

IC is a commonly used acronym (at least at some of the big tech companies) for Individual Contributor. For instance, when the author says "customer ICs", I imagine that means the internal engineers that would be using the database they created (individual contributors on other teams who would be customers/clients of this service).

(Vouched for this flagged comment after seeing the other comment)

[bebop]

Thanks, I had never heard this term until I started working at my current employer. It seems like bay area lingo is assumed to be understood by everyone, even though it may not be used in the industry as widely as some folks assume.

[kzrdude]

IC means integrated circuit. Obviously it can have many meanings, but.. maybe they are not obvious.

[softveda]

In Australia outside of IT roles, IC means In-Command i.e. a team lead and 2IC as 2nd In-Command or the person who becomes team lead if the team lead is on leave or resigns.

[Avalaxy]

> 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]

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]

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.

[jq-r]

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.

[Izkata]

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.