“IC” == “Individual Contributor” == “not a manager”. That’s standard terminology everywhere I’ve worked for the past decade, so I hadn’t thought to explain it.

I haven’t done embedded work since the mid-80s, but I’ve spent decades doing full-stack programming since almost the day the web was invented, including lead engineer on multiple web projects over the past 20 years — heck, I’m listed on several patents for a UI project I led. My current job is primarily backend services written in Scala, but I’m in the middle of coming more seriously up to speed with React and TypeScript right now. (My last frontend project having been based on a framework I built myself in Scala.js.)

So I’m not primarily a web frontend developer at the moment — but I’ve done more frontend development than most people who call themselves that, in a wide variety of frameworks, and am still doing so. I still very much disagree with your point — all it takes is putting in the effort to stay up to date.