[kzisme]

Maybe I haven't had enough coffee today, but what does "IC" stand for?

Do you have any tips/advice for someone who feels slightly stuck in an industry/tech stack? Ideally I want to switch jobs at some point away from what I've been doing, but don't have the ability to gain experience with language 'x' in a "professional" setting.

Due to this, I find it challenging to apply (or even consider applying) to positions that I find really interesting.

[Leherenn]

Don't worry too much, apply to jobs that you find interesting. Be upfront about it, try to show that you can learn new stuff on the job by relating to some previous experience, and if possible try to do a little project by yourself to get some of the basics and show you are serious about it.

It won't work all the time, but surprisingly more often than what you would think in my experience.

[naqeeb]

Switching industries/stacks isn't difficult for a software engineer. As another person mentioned, you should apply for jobs that interest you and see if there is a fit.

Personally, I was a Python developer for years before I joined a company that did mostly JavaScript. I was upfront that I would need a few months to ramp up on the language/framework/paradigms. For those few months, I had to put in more work than my peers so I can catch up and become productive.

You should expect a few months of struggling before it all makes sense.

P.S. Sorry for the jargon :) I was typing my response on the go.

[triceratops]

Individual contributor. As opposed to a manager.

[nivertech]

  IC - Informed Commander ;)

I dislike the term “IC”[1].

If employee is really an IC, then he/she doesn’t have a place on the team. It’s only OK for temps & outside consultants/freelancers.

This term implies that there are no P2P mentoring, leadership w/o authority, etc., but the truth is there are lots of that just under-the-radar, i.e. Dark or Shadow Engineering Management.

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[1] Individual Contributor

[dotBen]

It's a standard industry term, you're pushing an uphill battle if you want to change that.

Also, if you want to pedantic (which you are a little bit) 'contribution' (ie individual contributor) in its strictest interpretation is business value that can be demonstrated on the top or bottom line. P2P mentorship, under that strictest interpretation, isn't 'contribution'. No well managed, well planned organization wants 'shadow' or 'dark' management to be occurring, even if it might be.

Thus and therefore "individual contributor" is absolutely the correct term for someone who is only responsible for their own contribution to the business.

[nivertech]

> It's a standard industry term

It's a relatively new term. The first mention on HN is about 10 years ago. According to Google Trends the usage took off in 2009[1].

> if you want to change that

I have a problem with the adjective "individual", not with the "contributor" part. This term tries to achieve two things:

1. a better sounding term to a lowly "worker" or "non-manager", to make people feel good that they're not managers.

2. trying to put an artificial cap on the "contribution" part: i.e. as individual you're limited on the amount of value you can create for the company. The reality is some developers contributing 3x as much as 9-5s (putting 10x developer anecdotes aside).

3. it implies that managers are contributing much more than non-managers. In some multinationals there are 17 levels deep hierarchies of managers which adding net negative value to the companies they're "managing".

> No well managed, well planned organization wants 'shadow' or 'dark' management to be occurring, even if it might be.

There are lots of "shadow"/"dark" (think implicit, unwritten) processes in any organization, and without them no organization will be able to function effectively. Famous example is British postal strike, when the mail stopped being delivered once the postal workers started working strictly according to the rules.

For many corporate IT systems there is a "dark" IT app, like work-related WhatsApp groups.

For every Jira ticket here are probably several "dark" tickets.

For every middle manager, there are senior "IC"s who are fixing the holes by doing "shadow" management.

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[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=individu...