John E. Bredehoft, (Semi) Super IC

I read Tamara Grominsky’s weekly newsletter, and the 177th edition caught my eye.

It opened as follows:

“What does the future of PMM leadership look like?

“The Super IC role is so hot right now.”

For those unfamiliar with the “IC” acronym, Grominsky was referring to an individual contributor, as opposed to a manager of people.

The Super IC

Grominsky credits Elena Verna with the “Super IC” concept:

“I’m talking about employees with no direct reports who can do work that used to take a whole team (all while still getting paid like a leader). I’ve been calling this new role the High-Impact Individual Contributor.”

But I prefer “Super” to “High-Impact,” because it’s a lot more visual.

Perhaps I got a little too carried away with Tamara Grominsky’s “Super IC” idea. But at least you can’t accuse me of imposter syndrome.

But one distinguishing feature of both Grominsky’s and Verna’s definitions is an extremely capable lone wolf who, due to today’s tools, can do what used to require an entire team. Grominsky expressed it as follows, using the common “PMM” acronym to refer to a product marketing manager:

“Now, with tools like Claude Code, a PMM can vibe code the landing page, build an interactive demo, create a dashboard, and ship experiments themselves. The work that used to require a team and a few weeks can happen in an afternoon.”

In Verna’s case, she is currently living the “Hi-C” dream.

“My role is basically to parachute in and out of different projects and teams wherever I can create the most leverage. But mostly, I just have a huge block of IC work that I’m doing on my own. I’m running campaigns. Driving partnerships (did you see my latest LinkedIn x Lovable perk?). I’m coding my own growth optimizations and product updates. These are things that I used to rely on a large Growth org to do… now, I can do it all with just me, myself, and I.”

Now I’m not sure that I can do this for an organization as an outside consultant, unless I am REALLY embedded into the organization. Sure I can perform a number of the required tasks (although my vibe coding needs a bit of work).

But I don’t know that I can do this on behalf of an organization that does not employ me. The organization would be understandably leery of an outsider having all that power.

But certainly an organization’s EMPLOYEE with appropriate experience and authority can take the reins and call the shots, contributing directly to growth.

What about a SEMI Super IC?

But things are not binary, and it’s possible to be somewhere on the continuum of IC-dom: a SEMI Super IC, as it were.

In that case, I as the Semi Super IC would take care of most of the work, and just toss a completed artifact over to my consulting client for the final steps.

In this case, I (as Bredemarket) take over as much of the load as possible.

• I do NOT require you to provide me with a briefing book. I use my own questions to effectively assemble everything that a brief would contain.
• While I DO need you to review what I delivered, there have been many times when my clients have accepted my drafts without question.
• The one big barrier to a lone wolf delivery model is the need to access your tools for the final distribution. One of my clients actually gave me privileges within the company blog and the company LinkedIn account, and I regularly posted things directly to LinkedIn on behalf of the company. In any case, there was no need to transfer content from my Microsoft Word document to the client’s own tools.

So you can see how Bredemarket can serve as a powerful “super” individual contributor, freeing you for other priorities.

If you need my superpowers within your organization, why not set up a meeting with me?

Sorry for sharing it again, but now I’m strutting around proud.