The Rise of the Super IC Designer: A Revolution at the Intersection of Craft and Vision
Think about design teams for a minute. The traditional ladder has always pointed upward: get good enough at design, and you're rewarded by... stopping design work. You become a manager.
This is broken. Deeply, fundamentally broken. Like trying to reward a fish for swimming well by taking it out of water and making it direct traffic. (Hey, I never said it was a good traffic director.)
Because here's the reality: the most disruptive innovations rarely come from management layers. They come from people with their hands in the clay, solving real problems with exceptional craft.
This is where the Super Individual Contributor—the Super IC—changes everything.
The Power of Staying Hands-On
I've seen this pattern repeat across organizations, from startups to Fortune 500s. The evidence is overwhelming: when companies push their best designers into management by default, they lose the very magic that made those individuals so valuable in the first place.
But when they create space for Super ICs—highly skilled designers who stay hands-on while influencing strategy—they unlock exponential value. It's like discovering you can have both cake AND eat it. Turns out the cake paradox was just poor career planning all along.
A Super IC is someone who leads not with a team of direct reports, but with a depth of execution, a strategic mindset, and a track record of making impact through doing. They operate at the intersection of craft and vision—bridging design excellence with product direction and systems thinking.
AI: The Super IC's Secret Weapon
The Super IC revolution isn't fueled by AI—but it's accelerated by it.
Today's best Super ICs treat AI as a creative amplifier, not a replacement. They tap powerful tools to stay focused on what matters: solving meaningful problems with vision and craft.
Some examples:
Vercel's V0.dev turns ideas into production-ready web apps almost instantly.
Loveable accelerates UX and brand concepting with AI-quality ideation.
Cursor pairs Super ICs with an AI-native code editor, speeding prototyping and iteration.
Figma AI boosts layout, content, and system design.
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity act as always-on research partners—surfacing insights, strategy drafts, and creative expansion.
Used well, AI becomes a kind of invisible team behind every Super IC—handling the tedious, enriching the strategic, and sharpening the craft. It's like having a design studio in your pocket, minus the pocket lint and caffeine addiction. (Though the caffeine addiction usually stays. Some things AI just can't fix.)
The future isn't AI or humans. It's Super ICs—amplified by AI—leading the next wave of innovation.
Who Can Be a Super IC Designer?
I know you want to ask me, "OK, OK, who is a super IC designer then? Do I need to quit my design leader job?" Or newer designers may wonder if they need to wait years to be one. But the answer is anyone can and should be a super IC! It's all about grit, growth mindset, and most importantly the will to create something new at all odds. So you don't need to quit your job or ask your manager to make you an IC necessarily (but you can if you like.) You just need to change your approach to work (more strategy and more craft.)
This isn't about titles or years of experience. It's about mindset. About refusing to accept that leadership and hands-on creation must be separate paths. That's like saying you can either be the chef OR taste the food. Ridiculous!
Look at the most revolutionary products of our time. They weren't designed by committee. They weren't designed by people who hadn't touched the tools in years. They were designed by practitioners who maintained a white-hot connection to their craft while simultaneously thinking at systems scale.
The super IC isn't waiting for permission. They're too busy making the future.
Redesigning the Career Ladder
Here's the hard truth: Most career ladders still punish excellence by promoting people out of what they do best.
The solution isn't to fix the ladder. It's to build a second one.
Progressive organizations are already doing this—establishing parallel IC tracks that reward deeper levels of craft and strategic impact without requiring a move into management. Titles like Staff Designer, Principal, and Distinguished aren't fluff. They carry real weight, influence, and compensation.
But it's not just about titles. It's about scope: broader impact, more complex challenges, higher visibility, and a platform for mentorship and innovation. If your company's career ladder only goes up into management, you don't have a ladder—you have a corporate game of "the floor is lava" where the lava is doing actual design work.
Pay Them Like Leaders
One of the biggest obstacles to the Super IC model is baked into legacy compensation structures. For decades, pay growth was tied to headcount.
That no longer makes sense.
Top-performing ICs can—and should—earn as much or more than their management counterparts. They're delivering outsized business results, leading initiatives, mentoring teams, and shaping product direction.
Companies that get this right are shifting their comp models to reward impact, not org charts. After all, we don't pay surgeons based on how many other surgeons they manage. We pay them to be insanely great at surgery.
Leading Without Direct Reports
Super ICs don't lead by authority. They lead by:
Proof of concept: Showing, not telling, through working prototypes and systems.
Cross-functional credibility: Gaining influence by consistently delivering results.
Cultural modeling: Setting the standard for quality and user-centered thinking.
Mentorship: Guiding others informally and authentically.
In the world of Super ICs, leadership is earned, not assigned. It's not about who reports to whom on an org chart—it's about who people actually listen to when decisions matter. Kind of like how nobody technically reports to the office plant, but everyone somehow follows its lead on when to take a break.
Cross-Industry Validation
This isn't just happening in design.
In engineering, staff and principal engineers lead architecture decisions. In research, distinguished scientists shape company strategy. In journalism, senior editors define voice and influence coverage without managing teams.
The Super IC model is already winning across industries. It just needs naming, support, and amplification in design.
Metrics That Matter
To measure the value of a Super IC, stop counting direct reports.
Instead, measure:
Business impact of initiatives they drive
Cross-team strategic influence
Innovation velocity and quality
Mentorship and cultural contribution
Their impact isn't always visible on an org chart—but it's unmistakable in the company's trajectory. Like gravity—you can't see it directly, but you sure notice its effects.
Collaboration Models for Super ICs
Super ICs don't operate in isolation.
They collaborate horizontally—partnering with PMs, engineering leads, researchers, and executives. They bridge gaps. They amplify teams. They unlock silos.
At their best, they become the connective tissue of high-performing organizations. They're like organizational WD-40—they make everything run more smoothly without anyone fully understanding the magic of how they do it.
Mentorship Over Management
Super ICs grow people—not by managing them, but by inspiring and mentoring them.
They share context. They model best practices. They set the standard.
Mentorship scales impact across teams without needing formal control. It's the difference between being the person who orders others to move a boulder and being the person who shows them how to build a lever.
The Future of Work Is Super
Remote work. Asynchronous collaboration. Flatter hierarchies. The rise of AI-assisted workflows.
All of these trends favor the Super IC model.
In a world that demands both autonomy and breakthrough thinking, Super ICs are uniquely positioned to thrive—and to lead.
Case Studies in Action
Companies like Apple, Adobe, and Netflix are already embracing Super IC paths:
At Apple — Apple invests heavily in Principal-level designers across OS, AI, and hardware-software integration areas. Principal and Senior Principal Designers often lead critical work for experiences like Vision Pro, iOS, and Health — blending extraordinary craft with long-range strategy without necessarily moving into management.
At Adobe — Adobe has a mature, well-recognized IC ladder that includes Principal and Senior Principal Designer roles across Creative Cloud, Firefly, Document Cloud, and Express. These senior ICs drive cross-product design systems, AI-first experiences, and influence business and technical strategy at a platform scale, while staying hands-on with the craft.
At Netflix — Netflix cultivates Senior and Lead Product Designers who shape viewing experiences and content discovery without traditional management roles. These Super ICs drive interface evolution through prototyping and experimentation, wielding influence through craft rather than hierarchy while remaining deeply engaged in both research and implementation.
These companies aren't just innovating. They're betting on deep expertise—and winning. After all, if we always promoted our best players to coach, Tom Brady would have retired after his second season. Some people just need to stay in the game.
The Super IC Is Not Just Super. It's Revolutionary.
The old way is dead.
The companies that build for Super ICs—those who combine deep craft, leadership vision, and technological amplification—will define the next era of products, services, and culture.
This isn't about resisting leadership.
It's about redefining it.
Not just super.
Insanely great.
Your Turn: What's Your Super IC Journey?
I'll leave you with a few questions to reflect on:
Where are you on your own path to becoming a Super IC?
Does your company truly value hands-on leadership—or does it still reward management by default?
What shifts are you noticing in your industry around craft, leadership, and AI?
Which AI tools have become part of your creative or strategic arsenal?
What would your ideal Super IC career path look like if you could design it yourself?
The future isn't something we wait for.
It's something we build—with our hands, our minds, and our vision.
And it starts now. Unless you're waiting for your manager to approve it—in which case, maybe it's time to go Super IC after all.
