> I refuse to believe that there are people whose purpose in life is to be be a manager/VP, and, if they are, they might as well be walking corpses for all I know.

You could say the same thing about ICs though -- "I refuse to believe there are people whose purpose in life is to spend 5 days a week for 3 years building an enterprise line-of-business app to automate an obscure legacy business process that will be used by 10 people in total, and all 10 of those people will complain about the new app and wish they could go back to doing things the old way"

And as VP you can make a ton of money and spend it wisely, make a difference to your extended family or even a community you live.

That is a real meaning and sense of purpose for your earned money!

The very fact of calling "computer programmers" as "ICs" is part of this syndrome, I'm not sure exactly when it started showing up, I'd say it was popularised by FAANGs, so maybe 2015-2016-ish?

ICs aren't just computer programmers, they're designers, sales, marketing, customer support, etc. It's just an easier term for people who aren't managers than "not a manager".

Is IC offensive? I’ve never considered it to be. “Resources”, on the other hand, feels very offensive.

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.

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.

It stands for Individual Contributor, not Independent Contributor.

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.

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

I've heard the term (or "individual contributor") since at least the first dotcom boom in the late 90s.

It's been in use in engineering for decades now. My father was familiar with the term in his career, and he's pre-boomer.

I've noticed that the successful ones have exceptional self discipline, part of which is not letting it affect your life as a person. Also, from their body language as observed through office windows and meeting rooms, they're spending a lot of their time socializing.

The only way I know how to deal with this is FIRE. Investing as much as possible and working towards early retirement or semi-retirement so that you can at least live a good chunk of your life.

The world we live in still sucks away the best years of your life but at least you don't have to wait until your 60s to live the life you want. You can also work on side projects in your spare time that will hopefully accelerate this process.

This should be doable on a tech salary.

> The only way I know how to deal with this is FIRE. Investing as much as possible and working towards early retirement

I retired at 50 and "the dream" of FIRE is almost like someone else's idea of an ideal goal and I'm not that satisfied with it - perhaps because I'm out of sync with my peers (I have gained some retired 65+ friends). I had planned to enjoy investing however I find investing soulless and unsatisfying even though I'm doing well at it, so my life plan needs to change. My hobbies remain hobbies - they are not fulltime.

> The world we live in still sucks away the best years of your life

Some of the most satisfied people I know work in plain jobs.

I could found a startup but that's just creating a job for myself and the benefits of many many millions don't seem like they'd improve my life enough.

> however I find investing soulless and unsatisfying even though I'm doing well at it

Agreed, but how do you know you are doing well at it? Who hasn’t? Stock market only goes up and has been fueled by low interest rates for almost 2 decades.

>you don't have to wait until your 60s to live the life you want

But, at least at some point in your life, doing work within a company may provide that life. At some point, you're done. And that point may vary. But many people wouldn't really love (or at least benefit from) a bunch of money dropped in their lap when they graduated from college.

I can 100% tell you it will not provide that life to a lot of people. I'm happy for you if it does but others like myself would rather kill themselves than work a 9-5 until they're 60.

And a lot of those people would not have been in a position to start their own companies--much less succeed at it.

Have a big trust fund? Sure. If it were from Day 1, depending on the circumstances, 9-5 would have been ehh. But not sure how directed I would have been absent strong parental direction.

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

People need to have income in some way, shape, or form. They can earn it themselves whether by working for someone or by being an entrepreneur in some fashion. Or they they can be given it by family.

"others like myself would rather kill themselves than work a 9-5 until they're 60". If its in a corporate hell-hole, I might at times feel like that too. However, not all 9-5s are equal :) Public sector such as govt or academia, or other non-profit, can be fulfilling and not soul-sucking. Or, at some point switch to something only slightly related to tech, such as teaching. People talk about "full fat" FIRE, but thats unrealistic and/or requires some years of miserable sacrifice for most people (being rich before you start, or getting randomly lucky with stocks, doesn't count IMHO). They also talk of "Barista FIRE" - i:e you can't totally retire but can work a supposedly low-stress job (personally, not convinced by it, baristas can still feel "oppressed" at work) . What about the middle road... which is, live frugally (which helps the planet too), over-pay mortgage and avoid other debts, with such an attitude hopefully most techies would by their 40s be able to work in a job with a moderate professional salary, perhaps arguably underpaid for what they do, but, if that's what necessary to be fulfilled at work and not feel like killing oneself, then so be it? ;)