True! I meant the usual name now. For me it's the same as Engineer Manager: it seems to have come out of nowhere but it's the standard now. Before we called them simply "managers" (or sometimes "team leaders" of the non-technical variety).

PS: are you by any chance the same Izkata as the one in scifi.se?

I've been hearing it for about 5-7 years now, usually in the context of career paths. I think it became popular when companies realized that non all developers are made for management and you need a separate career track for people who want to advance, but don't want to be a manager.

Principal engineer, architect, etc all fall into the IC career path, while, manager, director, VP of eng, etc all fall into the management track.

I also never saw this until pretty recently. At first I assumed people were talking about independent contractors because it was the first thing that came to mind, it possibly fit the context I saw the term used in and nobody explained the acronym they just dropped it there like I was supposed to know what it meant.

Took a bit longer to realize they meant individual contributor.

Same; I saw an interview with Steve Jobs in the 80s or 90s where he used it. I was surprised.