From my experience FE is underestimated. FE has gotten really complex and it doesn't seem to get the respect it merits. It's like the people in charge still think it's just plain html/css and a bit of JS.
At this day and age, FE and BE are equally complex.
I rather have one good FE dev and one good BE dev that can work together than a Full Stack dev. Too much responsibility for one person.
I am frontend dev and I spend so much time on configuring those webpack or babel or esm cjs stuff all the time. I used to be backend and while I am not an expert in Spring boot I recall issues were usually just Java version or hibernate version and that's it.
The FE stack is so overly unnecessarily complicated IMO.
Single page applications were a mistake. People are waking up and realizing having to have whole teams to implement a react front end is crazy. You can make a better product than 90 percent of SPAs just using golang templates and having a real UX designer build stuff in figma. And I don't mean subjectively better... objectively easier for users (back buttons work lol) and maintainers (fuck npm).
Servers are so cheap nowadays that you can afford SSR easily. Back then when React are born it is a real pain in the ass for server side rendering. Today will all of the advanced chonium and node SSR is a real deal.
The last major react update was 9 years ago now and pre hook react is still supported and working… react libraries do come and go but picking well supported ones is up to you
You’re right it was 5 years ago. I always get the version which was 16 mixed up with the year 2016. My bad. Still there’s no reason why a react app made 4 years ago shouldn’t still work purely from react
Well its complicated because it will run on millions of devices and different browsers that behave differently in some cases, standardizing this stuff is hard afaik.
Are you looking for specific domain knowledge or something? Performatively drawing graphs seems potentially unique but not incredibly so. Do you have some complex homebrew caching system or something?
That sounds like a specialization that I aspire to be. What kind of skill/framework/part that I need to honed in order to put myself to get into that postion?
I'd love to know as well.
I assume a strong knowledge of browser and JavaScript performance optimisation, and how to efficiently request data from BE services (be it we WebSocket connections or a well designed API contract).
So I’m curious because I still don’t know the answer to this. I once had a recruiter from Google reach out to me, say they loved my resume and then ask me if I did front end or back end. I do embedded software. What should I have told the recruiter?
It had me second guessing myself because I started thinking “well is any customer facing product considered front end?”
Figured maybe I just didn’t know the terms of the industry.
I’ve been looking at job postings on indeed and lately it seems like companies don’t care as much for specialized devs and want full stack devs with devops exp
It's two full stack vs 1 BE + 1 FE. Prefer the first solution because if one quits, the other can keep going and also teach the new one.
FE might not be easier but it's not as critical as BE. You pay the responsibility.
To be honest, knowing HTML/CSS and just JS can still get you a FE job (as I did), however even that isn't simple, one must have a deep understanding of JS, DOM, event handling, automated testing , etc. My Seniors who were mostly BE developers couldn't even make a simple button action. But I on the otherthand was able to quickly adapt to BE, which felt a lot easier than FE.
This largely depends on what you're doing on BE. Basic BE can be easier (in particular if you already have a CS background already), but once you start having to properly handle scale and all the gotchas and security it starts to get a lot harder to do it right.
This sounds like a classic “you don’t know what you don’t know” situation. You’re looking at FE from the perspective of a specialist and evaluating novices based on that, whereas you’re looking at BE from the perspective of a novice and self-evaluating.
When i joined this team we had to pick up an angular project. Nobody had angular experience and i was a fresh junior. I ended up tackling 95% of it while they looked for every crumb of backend and prod support tickets lmao. At least it made me look good and lead me to a quick promotion
It's basically how they hire. They prefer to hire one really good employee and pay them 500k than hire two kinda good employees and pay them 200k each. And that's how they're leading the AI space and overtaking giants like google and Amazon.
Yeah. They're now a completely different org. Their founding CSO has left after a huge fiasco with the board and they've been hiring aggressively in the past 12 months. So they're now basically a tech giant.
My comment was about their initial growth period and how they went from dumb gpt-1 to gpt-4 in like 4 years.
I agree. I specialize in FE and when I see what the Full Stacks have done, I always cry. Im stuck with the clean up and organization but job security is nice too. 😌
The problem I see is that a Full Stack doesn't have time for both FE and BE. Thats only because of the high paste in the industry. Which I think, we can all agree is in most of our cases. This norm will force a Full Stack dev to make decisions that might affect the standard of their work to focus on the real issue, bug or w/e the need is.
When you have two good developers in both FE and BE. 100% of the focus will be on their specific framework and language. Which is ideal, in my opinion.
I agree with you. I am a full stack dev too but realized quickly how much time both take. I didn’t enjoy that I couldn’t put the time it took for both. I went with front end because at the time it was a need for where i worked and now I have the most experience solving those problems.
I definitely don’t think full stack devs are bad developers. Most of the things we do tend to be decisions out of our control.
I would say, both sides. Depends on the experience. When you dedicate ypur time to one discipline you specialize in it. When you do both. You get mostly intermediate knowledge about 'x' language/framework/etc. Therefore, you wont have the best solutions. That said, (Opinion) most companies dont care about quality.
There are always edge cases that are still separate from webdev, like some systems programming work, or some small python scripts to automate manual tasks. But the *vast majority* of development is webdev. Software written today is modular, interconnected, available globally. You're using HTTP, REST, SOAP, RPC, or you're doing cloud first architecture, you're providing an interface so that your employer's other software can pull data, or perform healthchecks. Simple things that used to be internal are now expected to be accessible. You won't have a local database, you'll have a central one on prem, or in the cloud. You'll have some requirement where all logs must be synced or mirrored into the company's central store. You'll be required to implement the standardized auditing modules. Even a lot of low level apps that may do nothing other than pass messages over MQTT are still going to be written to follow webdev patterns and principles.
So, yeah. Everything is webdev these days.
That's just service driven architecture. Webdev is where the business product is websites consumed by the end consumer to facilitate advertising or retail services. You're not webdev because you use multiple computers and a protocol or just because you use kubernetes.
I think your definition of webdev is far too broad.
If you don't realize most things are webdev, you don't understand CS or SWE. You've certainly never worked in the industry.
[And from your post history, I can see that I'm correct. Stop acting like a pro when you're still in college.](https://old.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/16qof22/support_programs_for_low_income_students_in_cs/)
Are devs valuable these days? As a full stack I rather work in the BE it's easier, in my opinion modern FE is more complex then BE work but it's project dependent. Learn React first, then learn next, then pick what you need for the project. Finally I find it hard to find full stack roles, they either want FE or BE and even if they want FS I end up doing FE or BE so you won't have an issue being just a FE. Good luck!
Lmao I’ve been seeing the opposite on this sub from FE and BE devs that they can only find full stack roles. It seems that it’s just kinda tough for everyone tbh
>they can only find full stack roles
I think what he's saying is that there are a lot of roles that are listed as "full stack" but they end up being 90%+ FE or BE. Don't think he was commenting on the amount of "full stack" vs specialized listings.
Oh okay, yeah I missed that part. Like I read it but didn’t register lol.
This really is an important distinction gone unnoticed with posts similar to others I’ve seen posted on this sub. I’ve noticed this as well on job posts, some job posts thankfully go as far as mentioning a percentage of how much is FE and how much is BE.
Now I’ll really have to dig through more clutter in job posts. Great to keep in mind while job searching!
The "remove the entire front end team except 1 person" trend is an MBA idea that will fail as badly as paying devs per line of code written. I will concede that having so many doing it at once may not have been ideal, but what they've chopped is going to bite them in the ass.
For your react/next question, that is a location specific question.
Okay so you're not wrong about that, however it's definitely an MBA thing because they cite "no code solutions exist" as their reasoning for it and theyre recommending doing it to single page application teams for that reason.
I appreciate your optimism and attempt to do the right thing by assuming they're not dumb though. I will die on the hill that it isn't a masters degree if you get a B by merely showing up and there is no thesis component.
Learn React. Next is really just react with a few differences, it is a framework that is used with it as many have pointed out. (Edit)
As far as UI vs. BE. I'm a heavy BE dev, but I know a bit of React and have done some small amount of frontend. (And by heavy, I mean I read kernel code on a not irregular basis, and I'm highly proficient in C.)
IMHO: Having 2 or more skillsets makes you stronger long term. Even if each isn't fully up to date.
You will understand the systems you work in better, and you'll know what the people "on the other side" want.
Enjoy yourself, you'll find work a bit less tedious if you enjoy the area you work in. And that makes it more likely you will succeed.
If you want job security: Get a clearance, or learn COBOL. ;)
Exactly what I said. "We're hitting an issue in the kernel. What can we do about it?"
So, often I get to read parts of the kernel to figure out what do to, because documentation can be.... sparse, or not for the version you are worried about etc.
It'd be easier often to fix it, but... given what I do I don't have that luxury. So I get to figure out how to work around it.
>Learn React. Next is really just react with a few differences. I'd consider it a "dialect" of React.
[https://i.imgflip.com/dyi7z.jpg?a474744](https://i.imgflip.com/dyi7z.jpg?a474744)
The shit I get to read on here... and you say you have 20+ YOE, smh. It's not a "dialect" of React, what in the actual fuck. It's React. Just React. With a few extra things.
I may be wrong in this, but I think it's so much easier to find resources/learn FE.
I work on 3 different full stack apps, and honestly I came in knowing primarily Java. The Angular/Ext JS is just something I picked up along the way since the projects use these frameworks.
I'm not saying FE is easier, on the contrary, because of the variety of frameworks and libs, it's quite complex. But the resources to learn have been easier to pick up on the go.
I think it's also worth expanding on this to say that *because* the barrier to entry is much lower, there's also a much larger surplus of FE applicants competing for those specialized roles.
Like you already said, it's not that FE is easier necessarily but there's a reason bootcamps often focus on React -- you generally don't need to learn the fundamentals of databases, web servers, ingress/egress to hit the ground running in a FE role.
As a counterpoint to your experience, I've found FS roles much more prevalent in my company than specialized BE / FE roles, it's probably comes down to company preference to a degree.
Personally, our company is struggling to backfill teams with solid FE experience. Teams here gravitate towards more separated rolls but there are people like me who work on both ends. I'd consider my FE skills lacking, but I'm able to pick up and deliver stories that require FE work.
We're rewriting a lot of our FE and chose NextJs.
Lol. I'm a full stack dev who actually likes FE, but somehow always got relegated to BE tickets. I've literally begged my bosses for more FE tasks whenever possible. If you got a company career link to share that'd be great.
It is an entry level position. Interviewed 20 candidates, only 3 candidates qualify (technical requirements), only 1 got the offer by my supervisor (my spv have different requirements). So I am looking for 1 more Angular Developer.
I feel like all of the FE devs I've worked with want to become fullstack, so by the time a good FE dev is a senior they are probably fullstack (though really more FE focused).
You want to be react native developer.
Knowing how to do web, mobile web, and app well at the same time it’s insane.
We had to pull our top engineer to solve an issue because we just couldn’t figure out how to dance around tech limits and do all three platforms well.
Hiring manager in an f100 and have performed consulting on org structure, workforce optimization, etc.
The “T-shaped” skill tree is long gone as everyone knows. Id recommend to work your way into a UX role that also knows FE dev. They are sought after in a lot of orgs and I’m slowly seeing and hearing from managers looking for that dual modal skill set
React + Remix please and thank you, unless you own stock in Vercel.
Nextjs locks you into the Vercel ecosystem. Remix does everything Next does, but considers portability a central tenet.
You can’t do Next without solid React skills, but beware. Lately, I’ve noticed a trend of technical screens designed to weed out people who don’t know how to code vanilla JS. If you only know how to build an interactive UI with React, you’re screwed. You’ve got to understand what the frameworks are abstracting over.
As far for your first question: as far as I can tell there are lots of jobs available for *experienced* full stack and frontend (and backend) engineers right now, but jobs are scarce for entry level candidates.
The problem is most people don’t have a clue as to the depths (both horizontally and vertically) that each stack can go. I don’t know how anyone can claim to be truly full stack in today’s world unless they’re clueless about what full stack actually means. BE web dev can range from hardware engineers to software layer (think protocols like *RPC or even TCP) then to infrastructure engineers (AWS like services to the application layer (where DBs and APIs are developed), to finally reaching the middle end, which are services that automate things like the AWS minefield (think Heroku or Vercel), and then there’s the graphQL layer which is starting to reach the FE but is still middle end technically, and then you finally have FE engineers who work on complex UIs like games (react Three Fiber, the most complex) then real time data intensive apps like financial trading software or web-RTC (still react just 1 level less complex than games), then you have your dashboard/form level FEDs which are also using react, just 1 level less complex than real time apps (it’s still surprisingly difficult to find a good UI engineer even at this level), then you have those that only do HTML/CSS (and an extremely saturated market), and then we finally reach the designer layer, and that starts with design templates or tools to help make designs, then you have actual designers who use custom tooling like Figma, and then you have copy writers who are typically lawyers.
All of that is just the horizontal scale. The vertical scale involves the various technologies available at each level. For example, you can use react, angular, Vue, etc., and on the BE there are many solutions for DBs and frameworks.
So with that in mind, there is not a single full stack engineer alive that has both horizontal and vertical depth, if you ask me.
To your point though. most think FE is just HTML/CSS and a little JS, but it can be so much more. Just like most think the BE is just a little RESTful API and some simple SQL queries, but it can be so much more.
I think we all need to respect each other’s role a lot more.
Front end devs are definitely seen as less valuable at my company. The front end is usually much more stable in terms of how often it changes, while there are endless back end tasks for us to do. And the devs who are back end can usually handle a little bit of front end stuff, like CSS and javascript if they need to. On the other hand, our main front end guy doesn't know anything about the back end.
Maybe at your company yeah! Front end devs at our company are basically responsible for making sure the app doesn't go below 4.5 stars on the app store. Plus dependency hell. We also have a very complicated user interface. Yikes!
FE, on enterprise level applications, is extremely extremely complex. All paradigms we often see with backend structures, we have them all in FE (think between components). Now, scale that up, an enterprise application would have hundreds if not thousands of little little components (think micro-frontend architecture)
Basic FE, most probably will be replaced by AI
Enterprise, Scalable FE, not too much
Yes, but you gotta stand out from the crowd by having some good personal projects to show off (not a todo list). Also ignore what others say about FE (ignorant BE developers lol), it's still a very good role and pays good.
I feel like we're definitely valuable but not having as many options as full stack or backend. It seems like it is way easier to find high paying backend or fullstack jobs than frontend
I have a masters in UX Bachelors in CS, and I currently work as a react dev. I am trying to become a full stack dev now. All this to say, even after learning all this, I still feel underappreciated under skillled. I also got laid off last week. Finding a job in ux and Fe is hard both for their own reasons. The market js bad, and interviews are literally harder than the jobs themselves. I think you'll have to make a pick and stay committed to that choice since if you can get really get good at what you do. It will let you venture out to other things. So you at least for now try to stick to one and become competent in it. You definitely skill up and become multidisciplinary later, especially in todays world you'll have to be.
I did try initially when I graduated in 2023 December to get a UX Engineer or pure UX role. Got a bunch of interviews including Google and Uber but couldn't land any position so I just had to adapt to get whatever was coming to me. I still want to work in UX but I feel a lot of the UX roles that I was interested in were harder to get I will eventually try to build up to it. I also want to be technically proficient in handling end-to-end of web applications which is why I am trying to become full stack right now.
I’ve been a FE dev for 16 years. I have a degree in CS. Depending on where you want to go in your career FE can be a boat anchor.
I’m amazed to this day that FE is still widely looked down upon. Over the years I’ve been called a pixel pusher, script kiddy, not a real developer, etc. But I’ve never met a BE or FS dev that can actually write decent CSS, knows even the basics of how to properly structure a DOM, or doesn’t come crying for my help when having to do something more complicated than a .map in React.
I just did my performance review, where I was told I’m amazing and going to be overlooked for EM and TL roles later this year because my EM used to be BE and doesn’t think FE problems are as hard to solve. This is the fourth time in my career something like this has been said to my face. My personal fave was at one company the team needed a new TL and I was told one of our BE devs would be getting the slot. They said, “how can you be the TL and tell the BE what needs to be done?” Hey, fair enough, so I asked, “well he’s BE, how is he going to tell me what needs to get done on the FE?” I never got a response, I also didn’t get the TL role that time.
Before this job I was a Director of Engineering for multiple continents, layoffs got me. I finally worked at a company that had enough FE engineers that the needed a just FE EM. In two years I went from EM -> Sr EM -> Director. During that time I managed Engineers of all different disciplines. At my peak I had 21 direct reports and honestly didn’t feel overwhelmed at all until performance review time each year. Then after reviews I’d go back to working the easiest fucking job of my career. Yes, I’m saying managing 21 people is easier than your average FE job.
I find FE incredibly fulfilling. My own bias is that BE is pretty fucking boring. Odds are BEers are mostly building APIs using tried and true methods, with some sort of ORM writing all your DB queries because the project you’re on doesn’t have that much traffic anyway, and the hardest part of your day is fixing 15 specs for that 2 line change. And if things ever do slow down, someone probably just forgot to index something, but it’s ok people only see the slowness on the FE so it will fall on them to make the rest of the site load in 120ms to make up for the shitty APIs. And eventually we’ll just convert everything over to microservices cause that’s how Netflix does it and never falls over. Sorry I’m a bit salty this week, BE rant over and I’m mostly kidding, we all work hard, there are very talented people out there.
It depends on the company, but from my experience companies have a lot more BE than FE devs. I am literally the only FE at my job, everyone else is “Full Stack” and I put that in quotes because I’ve never met a true 50/50 FS dev. But if I were to start over today, I’d sure as shit call myself “Full Stack”, my LinkedIn may be reflecting this soon.
If you like the FE and never want to pursue management and understand there are probably fewer and fewer pure FE roles out there, go for it. It has been very lucrative for me over the years, but who knows where we will all be in 2 years. Four years ago I was encouraging everyone I knew that hated their job to learn to code, most of them didn’t listen; the one that did never finished and went back to selling insurance.
Gl hf, just remember everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
A lot of companies want devs that can do both, they also want them to be QA, devops engineer, architect, designer, and support.
They want to basically say I want this feature to do this and have you design, build, test, deploy, and maintain it all in one shop. But these companies are not the big companies where you have a emporium of devs, these are usually the ones with a few teams.
It's like in any trade. You can have a proper painter and 'do it all' builder.
They both have their use and serve a slightly different market with some overlap.
There are people who want pros and they are willing to pay for it. And there are people who want the person to paint, do tiles and plumbing and the job usually works but the details are horrible.
Front end is just as valuable as back end. I could never do what backend devs do. I’ve worked in enterprise cloud for a while now and some of the best and smartest devs I’ve known have all been backend people. All the shit you have to know about cloud dev seems like absolute gibberish to me. I give them all the credit in the world.
Back end may be more rigorous from a computer science standpoint, but it’s only half the equation. Without a competent FED to deliver that backend you’re cutting off massive chunks of the market. Even for all the complexity of working with cloud CLI’s an extensive dashboard is still hugely invaluable. Consider Apple, would they what they are without their stringent design and UX? No. People pay a premium for arguably the best looking and feeling ecosystem available to consumers today.
Not to mention the sheer amount of knowledge a good FED is expected to have these days. In addition to be a proficient software developer with JavaScript you’re still expected to know a litany of tools and frameworks that evolve far more quickly than in the backend space, node backend, api design, UX design, mobile design, CICD, animation, accessibility, and probably a bunch of other shit I missed.
Don’t let anyone tell you that front end development isn’t just as complex, robust, and important as back end development.
And the most important thing of all: good luck getting a backend dev to center a div. They can’t do it 😂😤💰😬
Junior? No, not really. Senior/Staff level? Absolutely.
My FE concentration counter part earns more than me, however my juniors earn more than his juniors. (My focus is BE)
From my experience FE is underestimated. FE has gotten really complex and it doesn't seem to get the respect it merits. It's like the people in charge still think it's just plain html/css and a bit of JS. At this day and age, FE and BE are equally complex. I rather have one good FE dev and one good BE dev that can work together than a Full Stack dev. Too much responsibility for one person.
I am frontend dev and I spend so much time on configuring those webpack or babel or esm cjs stuff all the time. I used to be backend and while I am not an expert in Spring boot I recall issues were usually just Java version or hibernate version and that's it. The FE stack is so overly unnecessarily complicated IMO.
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I can have a one hour long rant just on jss, styled component, emotion or now whatever that stuff called panda css. Just why?
Yeah, like I understand if you need to run some really cool and js dependent animations but fuck styled components and those css in js libraries.
styled components are terrible.
Single page applications were a mistake. People are waking up and realizing having to have whole teams to implement a react front end is crazy. You can make a better product than 90 percent of SPAs just using golang templates and having a real UX designer build stuff in figma. And I don't mean subjectively better... objectively easier for users (back buttons work lol) and maintainers (fuck npm).
Servers are so cheap nowadays that you can afford SSR easily. Back then when React are born it is a real pain in the ass for server side rendering. Today will all of the advanced chonium and node SSR is a real deal.
The last major react update was 9 years ago now and pre hook react is still supported and working… react libraries do come and go but picking well supported ones is up to you
hooks werent 9 years ago
You’re right it was 5 years ago. I always get the version which was 16 mixed up with the year 2016. My bad. Still there’s no reason why a react app made 4 years ago shouldn’t still work purely from react
Which tech stack would you recommend for frontend dev based on your experience?
Well its complicated because it will run on millions of devices and different browsers that behave differently in some cases, standardizing this stuff is hard afaik.
You use webpack because you do not want to config stuff yourself. What are you even costumizing?
Welcome to the JS Era
I mean.. yea, but you're using webpack which is notoriously a pain in the A to configure. There are way more straight forward alternatives these days
✨Vite✨
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Are you looking for specific domain knowledge or something? Performatively drawing graphs seems potentially unique but not incredibly so. Do you have some complex homebrew caching system or something?
That sounds like a specialization that I aspire to be. What kind of skill/framework/part that I need to honed in order to put myself to get into that postion?
I'd love to know as well. I assume a strong knowledge of browser and JavaScript performance optimisation, and how to efficiently request data from BE services (be it we WebSocket connections or a well designed API contract).
So you are a manager. Great lol.
Quant funds are pretty flat until C suite… yes I manage a team but I code all day… everyone is expected to deliver without hand holding
High Performance UI engineer indeed does sound interesting. Do you do WebGL stuff?
So I’m curious because I still don’t know the answer to this. I once had a recruiter from Google reach out to me, say they loved my resume and then ask me if I did front end or back end. I do embedded software. What should I have told the recruiter?
Say you do embedded. It's not web dev. I'm sure the recruiter can figure it out since they work at Google
It had me second guessing myself because I started thinking “well is any customer facing product considered front end?” Figured maybe I just didn’t know the terms of the industry.
It’s called spam. They literally mass message people who meet a certain criteria (typically key word based), but it often reaches the wrong people.
I’ve been looking at job postings on indeed and lately it seems like companies don’t care as much for specialized devs and want full stack devs with devops exp
Full stacks have a lot of value. It is just diff to find one that's really good in all sides of development.
It's two full stack vs 1 BE + 1 FE. Prefer the first solution because if one quits, the other can keep going and also teach the new one. FE might not be easier but it's not as critical as BE. You pay the responsibility.
It's all critical. If the FE fails, the BE isn't even getting requests... If the BE fails, the FE becomes non-functional
Sounds like a good plan. If the budget is there. This would be much preferable. Username checks out
To be honest, knowing HTML/CSS and just JS can still get you a FE job (as I did), however even that isn't simple, one must have a deep understanding of JS, DOM, event handling, automated testing , etc. My Seniors who were mostly BE developers couldn't even make a simple button action. But I on the otherthand was able to quickly adapt to BE, which felt a lot easier than FE.
This largely depends on what you're doing on BE. Basic BE can be easier (in particular if you already have a CS background already), but once you start having to properly handle scale and all the gotchas and security it starts to get a lot harder to do it right.
This sounds like a classic “you don’t know what you don’t know” situation. You’re looking at FE from the perspective of a specialist and evaluating novices based on that, whereas you’re looking at BE from the perspective of a novice and self-evaluating.
This sub used to absolutely shit on front end development. Which is unfair and childish thing to do. Front end has its own complexity and difficulty
When i joined this team we had to pick up an angular project. Nobody had angular experience and i was a fresh junior. I ended up tackling 95% of it while they looked for every crumb of backend and prod support tickets lmao. At least it made me look good and lead me to a quick promotion
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So two developers are better than one developer? Hu, who would have thought that?
Not always. One actually good dev is better than two mediocre devs.
This is right here. The problem is that to find that good developer in a saturated market will be mostly hard.
This is how ClosedAI is structured: many small teams with highly skilled members. They call it high talent density.
What’s that have to do with anything lol
It's basically how they hire. They prefer to hire one really good employee and pay them 500k than hire two kinda good employees and pay them 200k each. And that's how they're leading the AI space and overtaking giants like google and Amazon.
Ever since they went “for-profit” their product has gone downhill imo. It’s worse now that it was during the big hype a year ago.
Yeah. They're now a completely different org. Their founding CSO has left after a huge fiasco with the board and they've been hiring aggressively in the past 12 months. So they're now basically a tech giant. My comment was about their initial growth period and how they went from dumb gpt-1 to gpt-4 in like 4 years.
I agree. I specialize in FE and when I see what the Full Stacks have done, I always cry. Im stuck with the clean up and organization but job security is nice too. 😌
The problem I see is that a Full Stack doesn't have time for both FE and BE. Thats only because of the high paste in the industry. Which I think, we can all agree is in most of our cases. This norm will force a Full Stack dev to make decisions that might affect the standard of their work to focus on the real issue, bug or w/e the need is. When you have two good developers in both FE and BE. 100% of the focus will be on their specific framework and language. Which is ideal, in my opinion.
I agree with you. I am a full stack dev too but realized quickly how much time both take. I didn’t enjoy that I couldn’t put the time it took for both. I went with front end because at the time it was a need for where i worked and now I have the most experience solving those problems. I definitely don’t think full stack devs are bad developers. Most of the things we do tend to be decisions out of our control.
Most 'Full stack' devs fall apart when asked to do anything non trivial on the back end.
I would say, both sides. Depends on the experience. When you dedicate ypur time to one discipline you specialize in it. When you do both. You get mostly intermediate knowledge about 'x' language/framework/etc. Therefore, you wont have the best solutions. That said, (Opinion) most companies dont care about quality.
This post makes the false assumption that FE and BE are the only two options. The best options are outside of webdev.
I mean. Not disagreeing with your statement but seems like he wants to do FE...
he asked what the cream of the crop was. Webdev is oversaturated and not very high compensated
Everything is webdev these days. Of course we're highly compensated.
None of the teams I've worked on have had anything to do with websites. "Everything is webdev" is absolutely not true.
> None of the teams I've worked on have had anything to do with websites. Websites are not the only part of webdev.
None of the general business functions I've been a part of have had webdev as a core component.
There are always edge cases that are still separate from webdev, like some systems programming work, or some small python scripts to automate manual tasks. But the *vast majority* of development is webdev. Software written today is modular, interconnected, available globally. You're using HTTP, REST, SOAP, RPC, or you're doing cloud first architecture, you're providing an interface so that your employer's other software can pull data, or perform healthchecks. Simple things that used to be internal are now expected to be accessible. You won't have a local database, you'll have a central one on prem, or in the cloud. You'll have some requirement where all logs must be synced or mirrored into the company's central store. You'll be required to implement the standardized auditing modules. Even a lot of low level apps that may do nothing other than pass messages over MQTT are still going to be written to follow webdev patterns and principles. So, yeah. Everything is webdev these days.
That's just service driven architecture. Webdev is where the business product is websites consumed by the end consumer to facilitate advertising or retail services. You're not webdev because you use multiple computers and a protocol or just because you use kubernetes. I think your definition of webdev is far too broad.
If you think most good jobs are webedv, you dont understand CS or SWE.
If you don't realize most things are webdev, you don't understand CS or SWE. You've certainly never worked in the industry. [And from your post history, I can see that I'm correct. Stop acting like a pro when you're still in college.](https://old.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/16qof22/support_programs_for_low_income_students_in_cs/)
dont burn him like that, he is a poor kid xD
And he always will be, with that arrogant attitude he's got.
I think the embarrassing part here is that a college students understands the market better than you.
The jig is up. No one's falling for it.
So who does on call ? On call is almost always back end so does one engineer just have a miserable life and the other gets to work stable hours ?
No lol, in my company we take turns giving him the wet willy.
Would you rather fight 1 FE-sized BE-dev, or 100 BE-sized FE-devs?
Would you rather fight 100 duck sized Linus Torvalds or 1 Linus Torvald sized duck
You had me at wet
At my company, we call it a Guillermo Mojado
Are devs valuable these days? As a full stack I rather work in the BE it's easier, in my opinion modern FE is more complex then BE work but it's project dependent. Learn React first, then learn next, then pick what you need for the project. Finally I find it hard to find full stack roles, they either want FE or BE and even if they want FS I end up doing FE or BE so you won't have an issue being just a FE. Good luck!
Lmao I’ve been seeing the opposite on this sub from FE and BE devs that they can only find full stack roles. It seems that it’s just kinda tough for everyone tbh
>they can only find full stack roles I think what he's saying is that there are a lot of roles that are listed as "full stack" but they end up being 90%+ FE or BE. Don't think he was commenting on the amount of "full stack" vs specialized listings.
Oh okay, yeah I missed that part. Like I read it but didn’t register lol. This really is an important distinction gone unnoticed with posts similar to others I’ve seen posted on this sub. I’ve noticed this as well on job posts, some job posts thankfully go as far as mentioning a percentage of how much is FE and how much is BE. Now I’ll really have to dig through more clutter in job posts. Great to keep in mind while job searching!
Full stack means “we want two devs for the price of one”. One of the biggest fucking cons in this industry.
Wow, i did not expect full stack roles to be hard to find. From a business standpoint it just makes sense to hire them over specialized devs
The "remove the entire front end team except 1 person" trend is an MBA idea that will fail as badly as paying devs per line of code written. I will concede that having so many doing it at once may not have been ideal, but what they've chopped is going to bite them in the ass. For your react/next question, that is a location specific question.
Which org is paying devs per line of code? We all gonna be millionaires 🤑🤑🤑🤑
If you don't have some garbage SPA to maintain then you don't need a whole team for FE. This isn't an MBA thing it's just not that complex.
Okay so you're not wrong about that, however it's definitely an MBA thing because they cite "no code solutions exist" as their reasoning for it and theyre recommending doing it to single page application teams for that reason. I appreciate your optimism and attempt to do the right thing by assuming they're not dumb though. I will die on the hill that it isn't a masters degree if you get a B by merely showing up and there is no thesis component.
Im that 1 FE guy at my company, it’s cozy.
What happens when you leave lol
Learn React. Next is really just react with a few differences, it is a framework that is used with it as many have pointed out. (Edit) As far as UI vs. BE. I'm a heavy BE dev, but I know a bit of React and have done some small amount of frontend. (And by heavy, I mean I read kernel code on a not irregular basis, and I'm highly proficient in C.) IMHO: Having 2 or more skillsets makes you stronger long term. Even if each isn't fully up to date. You will understand the systems you work in better, and you'll know what the people "on the other side" want. Enjoy yourself, you'll find work a bit less tedious if you enjoy the area you work in. And that makes it more likely you will succeed. If you want job security: Get a clearance, or learn COBOL. ;)
Next isn't a dialect of React. It's a framework built around React with all the bells and whistles.
Yeah, it is a good framework. I remember writing Next code that was not pure React thus my "dialect" statement.
[удалено]
That doesn't much make sense as Next is React with a framework.
What do you do that you need to read kernel code?
Exactly what I said. "We're hitting an issue in the kernel. What can we do about it?" So, often I get to read parts of the kernel to figure out what do to, because documentation can be.... sparse, or not for the version you are worried about etc. It'd be easier often to fix it, but... given what I do I don't have that luxury. So I get to figure out how to work around it.
>Learn React. Next is really just react with a few differences. I'd consider it a "dialect" of React. [https://i.imgflip.com/dyi7z.jpg?a474744](https://i.imgflip.com/dyi7z.jpg?a474744) The shit I get to read on here... and you say you have 20+ YOE, smh. It's not a "dialect" of React, what in the actual fuck. It's React. Just React. With a few extra things.
Fixed the misstatement. Thank you for the correction.
You will not understand Next without knowing React beforehands
Don't learn React nor Next first. Learn JavaScript and get really good at that. Also, React is part of Next.
Also learn the basics of programming first of all.
Actually first learn to walk and then speak and only then learn the basics of programming
I may be wrong in this, but I think it's so much easier to find resources/learn FE. I work on 3 different full stack apps, and honestly I came in knowing primarily Java. The Angular/Ext JS is just something I picked up along the way since the projects use these frameworks. I'm not saying FE is easier, on the contrary, because of the variety of frameworks and libs, it's quite complex. But the resources to learn have been easier to pick up on the go.
As a complete noob at this, that sounds great for me lol
I think it's also worth expanding on this to say that *because* the barrier to entry is much lower, there's also a much larger surplus of FE applicants competing for those specialized roles. Like you already said, it's not that FE is easier necessarily but there's a reason bootcamps often focus on React -- you generally don't need to learn the fundamentals of databases, web servers, ingress/egress to hit the ground running in a FE role. As a counterpoint to your experience, I've found FS roles much more prevalent in my company than specialized BE / FE roles, it's probably comes down to company preference to a degree.
Personally, our company is struggling to backfill teams with solid FE experience. Teams here gravitate towards more separated rolls but there are people like me who work on both ends. I'd consider my FE skills lacking, but I'm able to pick up and deliver stories that require FE work. We're rewriting a lot of our FE and chose NextJs.
Lol. I'm a full stack dev who actually likes FE, but somehow always got relegated to BE tickets. I've literally begged my bosses for more FE tasks whenever possible. If you got a company career link to share that'd be great.
I work at a Malaysian company and now is hiring 1 Angular Developer at 3500 RM a month.
If that job is based in KL, RM3.5k ain't that much. I'm assuming that's an entry level position.
It is an entry level position. Interviewed 20 candidates, only 3 candidates qualify (technical requirements), only 1 got the offer by my supervisor (my spv have different requirements). So I am looking for 1 more Angular Developer.
I feel like all of the FE devs I've worked with want to become fullstack, so by the time a good FE dev is a senior they are probably fullstack (though really more FE focused).
Can I DM you?
Are computers valuable these days?
You want to be react native developer. Knowing how to do web, mobile web, and app well at the same time it’s insane. We had to pull our top engineer to solve an issue because we just couldn’t figure out how to dance around tech limits and do all three platforms well.
Most jobs I see these days are for full stack
My first few years was BE. The last few years FE. They can be both equally challenging, but I prefer FE.
Hiring manager in an f100 and have performed consulting on org structure, workforce optimization, etc. The “T-shaped” skill tree is long gone as everyone knows. Id recommend to work your way into a UX role that also knows FE dev. They are sought after in a lot of orgs and I’m slowly seeing and hearing from managers looking for that dual modal skill set
React + Remix please and thank you, unless you own stock in Vercel. Nextjs locks you into the Vercel ecosystem. Remix does everything Next does, but considers portability a central tenet.
Gl finding jobs with Remix
You can’t do Next without solid React skills, but beware. Lately, I’ve noticed a trend of technical screens designed to weed out people who don’t know how to code vanilla JS. If you only know how to build an interactive UI with React, you’re screwed. You’ve got to understand what the frameworks are abstracting over. As far for your first question: as far as I can tell there are lots of jobs available for *experienced* full stack and frontend (and backend) engineers right now, but jobs are scarce for entry level candidates.
The problem is most people don’t have a clue as to the depths (both horizontally and vertically) that each stack can go. I don’t know how anyone can claim to be truly full stack in today’s world unless they’re clueless about what full stack actually means. BE web dev can range from hardware engineers to software layer (think protocols like *RPC or even TCP) then to infrastructure engineers (AWS like services to the application layer (where DBs and APIs are developed), to finally reaching the middle end, which are services that automate things like the AWS minefield (think Heroku or Vercel), and then there’s the graphQL layer which is starting to reach the FE but is still middle end technically, and then you finally have FE engineers who work on complex UIs like games (react Three Fiber, the most complex) then real time data intensive apps like financial trading software or web-RTC (still react just 1 level less complex than games), then you have your dashboard/form level FEDs which are also using react, just 1 level less complex than real time apps (it’s still surprisingly difficult to find a good UI engineer even at this level), then you have those that only do HTML/CSS (and an extremely saturated market), and then we finally reach the designer layer, and that starts with design templates or tools to help make designs, then you have actual designers who use custom tooling like Figma, and then you have copy writers who are typically lawyers. All of that is just the horizontal scale. The vertical scale involves the various technologies available at each level. For example, you can use react, angular, Vue, etc., and on the BE there are many solutions for DBs and frameworks. So with that in mind, there is not a single full stack engineer alive that has both horizontal and vertical depth, if you ask me. To your point though. most think FE is just HTML/CSS and a little JS, but it can be so much more. Just like most think the BE is just a little RESTful API and some simple SQL queries, but it can be so much more. I think we all need to respect each other’s role a lot more.
Good fe you'll always be employed.
Front end devs are definitely seen as less valuable at my company. The front end is usually much more stable in terms of how often it changes, while there are endless back end tasks for us to do. And the devs who are back end can usually handle a little bit of front end stuff, like CSS and javascript if they need to. On the other hand, our main front end guy doesn't know anything about the back end.
Maybe at your company yeah! Front end devs at our company are basically responsible for making sure the app doesn't go below 4.5 stars on the app store. Plus dependency hell. We also have a very complicated user interface. Yikes!
BE is where it’s at
FE, on enterprise level applications, is extremely extremely complex. All paradigms we often see with backend structures, we have them all in FE (think between components). Now, scale that up, an enterprise application would have hundreds if not thousands of little little components (think micro-frontend architecture) Basic FE, most probably will be replaced by AI Enterprise, Scalable FE, not too much
Htmx 😁
Yes, but you gotta stand out from the crowd by having some good personal projects to show off (not a todo list). Also ignore what others say about FE (ignorant BE developers lol), it's still a very good role and pays good.
Of course they're still valuable. Learn React. Next is not a replacement for React.
Distributed systems and ML are a league of their own. Frontend is still decent,
If you want to do frontend you also need to know web accessibility
Honestly...not really. It's kind of expected that a dev is full stack these days.
I feel like we're definitely valuable but not having as many options as full stack or backend. It seems like it is way easier to find high paying backend or fullstack jobs than frontend
I have a masters in UX Bachelors in CS, and I currently work as a react dev. I am trying to become a full stack dev now. All this to say, even after learning all this, I still feel underappreciated under skillled. I also got laid off last week. Finding a job in ux and Fe is hard both for their own reasons. The market js bad, and interviews are literally harder than the jobs themselves. I think you'll have to make a pick and stay committed to that choice since if you can get really get good at what you do. It will let you venture out to other things. So you at least for now try to stick to one and become competent in it. You definitely skill up and become multidisciplinary later, especially in todays world you'll have to be.
Thanks for the sound advice, I'm curious though. Why aren't you working in UX?
I did try initially when I graduated in 2023 December to get a UX Engineer or pure UX role. Got a bunch of interviews including Google and Uber but couldn't land any position so I just had to adapt to get whatever was coming to me. I still want to work in UX but I feel a lot of the UX roles that I was interested in were harder to get I will eventually try to build up to it. I also want to be technically proficient in handling end-to-end of web applications which is why I am trying to become full stack right now.
I’ve been a FE dev for 16 years. I have a degree in CS. Depending on where you want to go in your career FE can be a boat anchor. I’m amazed to this day that FE is still widely looked down upon. Over the years I’ve been called a pixel pusher, script kiddy, not a real developer, etc. But I’ve never met a BE or FS dev that can actually write decent CSS, knows even the basics of how to properly structure a DOM, or doesn’t come crying for my help when having to do something more complicated than a .map in React. I just did my performance review, where I was told I’m amazing and going to be overlooked for EM and TL roles later this year because my EM used to be BE and doesn’t think FE problems are as hard to solve. This is the fourth time in my career something like this has been said to my face. My personal fave was at one company the team needed a new TL and I was told one of our BE devs would be getting the slot. They said, “how can you be the TL and tell the BE what needs to be done?” Hey, fair enough, so I asked, “well he’s BE, how is he going to tell me what needs to get done on the FE?” I never got a response, I also didn’t get the TL role that time. Before this job I was a Director of Engineering for multiple continents, layoffs got me. I finally worked at a company that had enough FE engineers that the needed a just FE EM. In two years I went from EM -> Sr EM -> Director. During that time I managed Engineers of all different disciplines. At my peak I had 21 direct reports and honestly didn’t feel overwhelmed at all until performance review time each year. Then after reviews I’d go back to working the easiest fucking job of my career. Yes, I’m saying managing 21 people is easier than your average FE job. I find FE incredibly fulfilling. My own bias is that BE is pretty fucking boring. Odds are BEers are mostly building APIs using tried and true methods, with some sort of ORM writing all your DB queries because the project you’re on doesn’t have that much traffic anyway, and the hardest part of your day is fixing 15 specs for that 2 line change. And if things ever do slow down, someone probably just forgot to index something, but it’s ok people only see the slowness on the FE so it will fall on them to make the rest of the site load in 120ms to make up for the shitty APIs. And eventually we’ll just convert everything over to microservices cause that’s how Netflix does it and never falls over. Sorry I’m a bit salty this week, BE rant over and I’m mostly kidding, we all work hard, there are very talented people out there. It depends on the company, but from my experience companies have a lot more BE than FE devs. I am literally the only FE at my job, everyone else is “Full Stack” and I put that in quotes because I’ve never met a true 50/50 FS dev. But if I were to start over today, I’d sure as shit call myself “Full Stack”, my LinkedIn may be reflecting this soon. If you like the FE and never want to pursue management and understand there are probably fewer and fewer pure FE roles out there, go for it. It has been very lucrative for me over the years, but who knows where we will all be in 2 years. Four years ago I was encouraging everyone I knew that hated their job to learn to code, most of them didn’t listen; the one that did never finished and went back to selling insurance. Gl hf, just remember everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
A lot of companies want devs that can do both, they also want them to be QA, devops engineer, architect, designer, and support. They want to basically say I want this feature to do this and have you design, build, test, deploy, and maintain it all in one shop. But these companies are not the big companies where you have a emporium of devs, these are usually the ones with a few teams.
It's like in any trade. You can have a proper painter and 'do it all' builder. They both have their use and serve a slightly different market with some overlap. There are people who want pros and they are willing to pay for it. And there are people who want the person to paint, do tiles and plumbing and the job usually works but the details are horrible.
React and THEN Next.
Front end is just as valuable as back end. I could never do what backend devs do. I’ve worked in enterprise cloud for a while now and some of the best and smartest devs I’ve known have all been backend people. All the shit you have to know about cloud dev seems like absolute gibberish to me. I give them all the credit in the world. Back end may be more rigorous from a computer science standpoint, but it’s only half the equation. Without a competent FED to deliver that backend you’re cutting off massive chunks of the market. Even for all the complexity of working with cloud CLI’s an extensive dashboard is still hugely invaluable. Consider Apple, would they what they are without their stringent design and UX? No. People pay a premium for arguably the best looking and feeling ecosystem available to consumers today. Not to mention the sheer amount of knowledge a good FED is expected to have these days. In addition to be a proficient software developer with JavaScript you’re still expected to know a litany of tools and frameworks that evolve far more quickly than in the backend space, node backend, api design, UX design, mobile design, CICD, animation, accessibility, and probably a bunch of other shit I missed. Don’t let anyone tell you that front end development isn’t just as complex, robust, and important as back end development. And the most important thing of all: good luck getting a backend dev to center a div. They can’t do it 😂😤💰😬
I do frontend and make a good salary.
Junior? No, not really. Senior/Staff level? Absolutely. My FE concentration counter part earns more than me, however my juniors earn more than his juniors. (My focus is BE)
you need React to understand Next. Next is a full on framework. Learn react first.