Where do individual contributors go once they peak?

Re:Where do individual contributors go once they peak? by chubot on Friday December 27, 2019 @12:59PM (#21892915)

Hm what company / subfield is this in?

I definitely think tools can have a lot of leverage, and an experienced IC could easily develop a tool that would save time for the whole team. And I've seen it happen.

But IME this is the exception rather than the rule. The experienced engineer usually gets the credit for building the system with the tool (for which it was essential), but not building the tool itself. The tool is considered useless until someone has proved it on a important, shipping project.

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Re:Where do individual contributors go once they peak? by jupp0r on Friday December 27, 2019 @01:20PM (#21893099)

The tool can be a library that software made by other teams depends on (directly or indirectly).

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Re:Where do individual contributors go once they peak? by fg6hr on Friday December 27, 2019 @01:55PM (#21893416)

This often doesn't mean much because when there are tons of highly capable engineers, anyone could write that library and it's only a question who had a chance to do it.

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Re:Where do individual contributors go once they peak? by jupp0r on Tuesday December 31, 2019 @09:44PM (#21926317)

With that argument, nobody can ever have high impact on anything.

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