Who are senior individual contributors?

Why should you read this blog?

Tech Joke: “Job Advertisement, 2022 - We need someone with 10 years of ChatGPT experience” [ChatGPT only came out in 2022, so no one can have 10 years of knowledge on that product but recruiters and managers still pose unreasonable demands on Senior ICs in their job descriptions].

Senior Individual Contributors are a new class of Product Managers, Program Managers and Engineers looking to influence and lead an organization without formal managing and reporting structure. Thus this book is for:

• Junior ICs

  • wondering what senior behaviors look like 

  • choosing the individual contributor track instead of management

  • thinking about influencing and leading without managing

  • growing their career and income

  • becoming more valuable to their company

• Managers

  • growing senior ICs and wondering how to help them and what behaviors to grow

  • realizing that their company expects them to roll up the sleeves themselves

• TLMs, L6-8 Engineers

  •  that stopped coding and lead via vision and design documents