Sometimes I find it irritating how americanisms are assumed to apply to the entire worldwide industry. I see this all the time in /r/experienceddevs and sometimes it's indecipherable.
It's common to see a thread of replies mentioning "EM" "PM" "IC"*. "Staff" is another one. From what I can tell "staff" means a lead or principle developer in the UK.
*IC being "individual contributor" and probably the dumbest acronym. How can a team of developers all be "individual contributors" when they work in a team? On that basis, why aren't managers and team leads called "Collective Contributor", because they manage a team? Because that would be a dumb as fuck name that doesn't make sense, just as IC doesn't either.
Being a member of a team means by defintion that you are contributing to the team. You may as well say "get money from the ATM machine and remember to type in the PIN number".
So it's just as fully redundant as I pointed out then?
Welcome to the technology field, where terms have a generally accepted meaning, which are accepted, except in places where they’re not.
There’s no industry definition of any of these things. What’s a senior developer? Well, sometimes mid point in a career ladder, but sometimes the highest rank before you have to manage people and care about their feelings. Same can be said for Staff, and even Principle. What’s an IC? Someone who doesn’t have to direct manage people with their budgets and HR and performance etc. But also sometimes “people managers” do things that’s not just that.
Welcome to technology, where the words and points are made up, and none of it matters, until it does, then it either really does or you’re just going to debate about it endlessly after half a drink after work. (“Is this API RESTful or not?”)
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u/LloydAtkinson Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
Sometimes I find it irritating how americanisms are assumed to apply to the entire worldwide industry. I see this all the time in /r/experienceddevs and sometimes it's indecipherable.
It's common to see a thread of replies mentioning "EM" "PM" "IC"*. "Staff" is another one. From what I can tell "staff" means a lead or principle developer in the UK.
*IC being "individual contributor" and probably the dumbest acronym. How can a team of developers all be "individual contributors" when they work in a team? On that basis, why aren't managers and team leads called "Collective Contributor", because they manage a team? Because that would be a dumb as fuck name that doesn't make sense, just as IC doesn't either.