Well, taken at face value, it is a bit of an oxymoron. To contribute is to be part of a group; by definition, a contributor can't be wholly independent, because they're adding to a corpus, not producing it by themselves.

▲

dullcrisp 2 years ago | parent | next [-]

Oh, I take it the other way. To me it implies that management doesn’t contribute anything on their own, which is kind of true but also kind of a funny phrasing.

▲

reshlo 2 years ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It stands for Individual Contributor, not Independent Contributor.

	▲	xboxnolifes 2 years ago \| parent [-]
		I don't read it negatively, but to play devil's advocate here... Managers are also individuals who are contributing to the group corpus. They just do it by interfacing with people instead of code. Though, that's just semantics on the naming. IC just means not having direct reports.

▲

cudgy 2 years ago | parent | prev [-]

True. Who is not an individual contributor? I find the term meaningless.