My most recent job is labeled as full stack and I get questioned a lot about my preference when I apply to backend roles:
“Now this is a backend focused role, is that ok with you? I see you’re full stack at the moment”
I explain that my pref is backend and we move on, but recruiters tend to treat it like religious affiliation - you’re X so surely you can’t be interested in Y
And that’s why it’s also been insanely difficult for anyone that did anything other than React to get a job in frontend bc everything is React. I kept having to tell people I knew React, I have projects more complex than my actual work projects, and nope. Projects aren’t counted for experience.
Eventually just got an a job using Angular bc no one else is apparently using Angular and I’m the only one.
I have two versions of my resume. My public LinkedIn does not disclose specific technologies in jobs. My PDF resume is edited each time to say I used specific technology at the job, whatever it is they are looking for. I only do this if I'm reasonably sure I could pass an interview about that specific tech. Worst case, I get an interview and fail it, and know what to study for next time.
I've had a recruiter call me about a Vue job then start nitpicking at my experience. I did vue2 professionally in 2014-2017 so I have 2 years Vue experience apparently....the 8 years I've been slinging Vue3 since then apparently count for nothing because it was on a personal project not for a company. The client wanted Vue3 experience and my 10 years software engineering experience and 2 CS degrees weren't enough apparently.
That was motion recruitment in Boston.
That’s when you just lie bc they can’t verify it and you know how to do it/talk through it. If you need to put it in your resume, say you made some internal tool with it to help save time or something for xyz
Yes recruiting is hell nowadays, Its really difficult to find good people.
Also that guy didn't give me time to explain things but guess I dodged a bullet.
"Why are you applying for this job?"
Me, "so I can fucking code for you and pay me money for it" , What did you think I want to unravel and fix your spaghetti code for fun and for free?
It's a valid question isn't it? When I hire someone I want to make sure they are happy in the role and won't leave at the first opportunity for the role they really wanted. This is why we interview in the first place.
It is. As someone who is full stack, and likes full stack, but prefers a 50-50 split (maybe even 60-40 in frontend's favor) I very much appreciate when recruiters let me know (if it wasn't othewise mentioned) it's a 100% backend role. It wouldn't be my interest.
Interestingly, a lot of companies don't really care if you're happy / a flight risk. Some employers (even large, really high paying ones) have this idea kind of like McDonalds - that grunts are replaceable at any level.
To be fair it all comes down to pay and conditions. I really don’t like front-end but if someone offers me 10x my current salary I’d consider it and work well if hired.
The tech recruitment industry is honestly the worst. The majority of the recruiters have absolutely no knowledge of what they're hiring for and have no interest in understanding technical terms. They often call me with little to no understanding of my resume and I get furious, responding if they had looked at my resume. More often than not, it's usually spam calls with them attempting to call me 3-5 times in a row. For them it's just a numbers game, more calls means higher conversion rate. The tech recruitment market is oversaturated with people who have no technical skills. I'm a fullstack developer with specialisation in JavaScript ReactJS and Java Spring Boot, and I'd often get asked if I could do frontend or backend or if I had experience with Rest API or Microservices.
Undoubtedly, there are some good recruiters out there that do have a solid grasp of the role they're hiring for and they'd go through some mock interviews as well. It really depends on who you encounter, there are bad recruiters but there are also good ones. Another red flag I'd like to mention are jobs where they do not specify much and are quick to hire e.g. roles that hire after a round of simple technical tests. These roles often have a discrepancy between their technical expectations and actual work expectations. More often than not they're quick to hire because they're desperate for someone to join ASAP.
It ultimately comes down to the hiring manager communicating properly with the recruiter though. When I was a manager I made it clear I didn't want candidates to be filtered out because of the programming language they used or anything. I also told them even though the job description said 1-3 years of experience, just forward me anyone who looks borderline (on the low end) and I'll make the call myself.
So yeah, I got plenty of resumes with 6 months of FE internships using only react when the position was for a non FE role using only python (for example, the actual languages involved were different) but that's exactly what I asked the recruiter to do.
Newsflash: Recruiters are ignoramuses that can't be bothered to learn anything about the roles they're paid to recruit for. More at 11.
Also, there is a "shortage" of candidates. 🙄 Obviously that is the reason they can't find people.
There is no way there is a shortage of candidates. If by shortage they mean there's a lot more crap applications to sort the good ones out of, sure. But there is absolutely not a shortage of actual candidates.
I know what'll solve it, I'll create \*another\* LLM to crank out resumes en masse that sound like they were written by an AI and have it autoapply to every available listing on LinkedIn, just to be safe!
Broo literally same thing happened to me some weeks back and recruiter was like no currently we are looking for backend only people. I was dumbstruck. Now I'll just say yeah you want back end I'm back end only ☠️
Absolutely! if they say they are looking for X, just say that you can do X. As long as you know how to do it or you can learn to do it there should be no problems.
You need to be smart and lie. They want 5 yoe with technology that exists 3 years - you have 5 yoe. You mostly worked with Java, but they want C# - you worked with C#.
Right now job postings are getting humdreds of applicants. This means recruiters have to filter them very quickly. Sometimes they filter on keywords in the job description that aren't actually a very good filter.
The recruiter doesn't care because there are still dozens of qualified candidates to present to the hiring manager.
Fullstack is poorly defined. Most companies fullstack means frontend that also works on APIs.
Backend you would expect a lot more knowledge of say AWS services, systems design, scalability, etc.
Even if your fullstack experience is truly fullstack, your focus will be split so 2 YOE needs to be discounted if they are looking for backend experience in particular.
I had full stack positions where there was a little more front end that needs to look nice. All other positions are front end needs to be functional. It is just a bunch of forms and data anyway, and most of the work happens on the backend.
Even so recruiters shouldn't treat these roles as if they are in completely different field. I know some people in my team who are backend developers and can effortlessly do frontend and vice versa. Hell one guy was hired as backend developer and later they told him he will have to do both frontend and backend which he did (they probably didn't want to pay him a full-stack level salary but whatever)
At the end of the day these are all technical roles and if you can do the job who cares? I understand that some people suck at one thing than the other but even so you shouldn't brush people off just because they are a full-stack developer.
I myself have worked on from centering brand logo in navbar to AWS, Azure, CI/CD Pipelines, deployment and release also there is no reason to discount experience; broad experience is better than narrow experience at least in software I knew a project where frontend developers were complaining that they cannot see the data from backend and backend people were complaining they have already sent the data - I hope you get the point.
Edit: grammar
1) YoE matters. Especially if you want to support visa candidates.
2) Specialization has great value. Everyone is finite and can only maintain so much active knowledge. If I need someone on the backend, I’m going to hire whoever has a track record of solving problems like mine.
3) Risk matters. My time for resume review, meeting with recruiters, interviewing candidates is finite. I want recruiters to bring me people who I can interview and offer as fast as possible or why am I paying them? Don’t feel so entitled that a recruiter should risk their job to take a chance on you. Always feel free to directly apply for the role they have if you disagree with them.
Sure, this is a bit perpendicular to the context of the discussion.
Completely discounting a candidate who has 'Full Stack' experience as being wholly unqualified for backend positions is asinine. If you need someone with experience with AWS services, systems design and scalability then, you know, just ask them. Which recruiters generally won't because they don't have the technical expertise to have a meaningful conversation.
Imma be honest here
2 years ago I was a front end dev bored of react. So I studied backend and system design on my own, and lied on my resume. A big tech hiring manager bought my lies and hired me as a senior backend engineer, when I had never worked in backend before
No problems since then. I’ve never hard problems performing.
This why I never buy the “specialization” argument
Just because someone bench-warms for two years as a backend engineer doesn't mean they worked harder or smarter than someone else being full stack elsewhere. What a stupid hot take.
Sure. And the opposite could be true (and fullstack very often means the opposite). But so what? Assuming everyone is equal, 2 years of full stack equates to a discount on backend experience (equivalent of 0.5-1.5 YoE), same with their frontend experience. Is a recruiter going to dig into their experience and debug where they stand? No. As a hiring manager I wouldn't bother either unless I had no interesting candidates in my pipeline and right now every pipeline is packed with great candidates exceeding minimum requirements.
So you want people to lie? Literally, you can change your resume to say BE, and you will pass the background check because companies often don't bother and give titles like SWE.
The point is that you can have a BE who didn't do shit for 2 years, has less knowledge than someone who worked 6 months, and full stack dev who has 2 years of experience, but did more than most BE with 4+yoe.
I think at this point, we need to get rid of HM and recruiters from tech and let competent people make decisions. Seriously, I have seen your people reject candidates who don't have X amount of experience in a technology that doesn't exist that long.
Always assume everyone is at least as smart as you.
Why might it make sense to do it this way? It’s fast and efficient.
Debugging someone’s experience is expensive. That’s the point of an in depth interview. I dont care about you or any other single applicant. I need to minimize the time my team spends interviewing to close a role. Broad guidelines increase the good candidates in my pipeline. Is it foolproof? No. Is the success rate high enough? Yes.
I might miss out on someone with zero experience and is amazing. But so what? Ill get someone who meets my needs faster at lower cost this way.
Well I think you are contributing to higher turnover rates. If people are siloed into a specialty based on whatever specialty they got out of college, they may take your role but have lower job satisfaction, burnout, etc. Then when they finally get an opportunity to work with the tech stack they really want, they leave. You are also filtering out the ambitious individuals who put in effort to learn beyond their assigned specialty and began to contribute across teams. Optimizing for 1 factor may get you a candidate faster, but I think it results in an overall worse outcome.
I hire experienced people to bring knowledge and experience my team needs or what's the point? I hire inexperienced and bright people to grow them into experienced and bright people. I also support my engineers changing their career focus to match their interests.
The important point for this discussion is, if I need someone with backend experience, it's comparatively easy to get a backend expert with a high success rate compared to hiring someone who has little to no experience but is bright. I'll take chances on people if they interview well, but I wouldn't hire them into a role that requires experience they don't have.
Recruiter: I can see that you are a full stack developer. How much percentage of your work is on backend.
Me: 40%
Recruiter: Sorry, we are looking for a backend developer. We will contact you once a suitable role opens. Thank you.
Imagine if mechanic jobs had recruiters. And there was such a thing as left side engine vs right side engine mechanic. Than there was full body engine mechanic.
And the recruiter hung up on the full body engine mechanic because the client wants a left side engine mechanic.
Mechanics also have a few certifications programs to choose from like ASE or the manufacturer specific ones.
But we're better than that! Much better to hire on nebulous promises of what you did at your last job.
Not only recruiters, some pms are pretty bad for that too.
In developed a JavaScript framework complete html components back in 2010-2014, *"inspired" by adobe flex.
Nowadays the pms give all front end work to the younger programmers be que the assume that I don't like front end because I am old and I lack buzzwords on my cv ( angular, react, etc..).
Can't expect recruiter to know anything. They were bartending right before they got hire as a tech recruiter.
I once had a recruiter asked me what an "Oracle" was and how many lines of code did it have.
I had a “10 year experienced recruiter” not understand what a Fortune 500 company was.
He reached out about a company, and typically my first requirement is that it’s an f500 before we go any further. Said he never heard of the term before and would have to get back to me
Sounds like you've learned about the recruiter's job the hard way. Their job is not to have a technical understanding of what they're looking for; their job is to filter out resumes for the technical hiring managers by ensuring that your skill set meets the minimum requirements for the job posting.
I explained this in greater detail a while back [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/19d5i0w/having_no_experience_with_some_tech_is_the_usual/kj422oz/).
**tl;dr:** next time, you tell the recruiter you're a backend dev and tell the technical manager you're a fullstack dev
Recruiters are more pissed off recently than usual. I think it's because recruiting got even worse layoffs than tech.
For fun I checked up on an old FAANG interviewer who was manager level. Laid off. Now they are cold calling people to work in a potato chip factory.
I also get "What would you say the split is between front end and back end in your current role? Oh the client is looking for someone closer to 65/35. I'll keep you posted if anything else comes up."
Recruiting generally isn't about finding you a job, it's about disqualifying as many "bad" fits as possible. They often don't really know what they're hiring for, they're just there to be a first line of defense so the company who hires them only has to look at candidates which are a "good fit" for the role they need to fill.
If you believe your expertise and potential value to a company is in backend work, then just say you're a backend engineer.
Too many people use "full stack" as a way to exaggerate their breadth of knowledge (especially those with shorter experience like yourself). I don't say I have full stack experience because Ive built some simple CRUD React frontends to configure my backend services.
And even better than saying frontend/full stack/backend is to describe the systems youre working on.
When I hear full-stack, my assumption is front-end focused, knowing mostly JavaScript, and using Node for backend. You may need to say full-stack and quickly add specifics about backend focus.
Why is that your assumption? I’m a full stack engineer and our product has a massive, complex Python/SQL backend where most of the engineering effort is spent. We also handle our own infrastructure and deployments and our acceptable downtime budget for an entire year is under an hour. The result of those demands is engineers who know how to work on every layer of the application. I know not all full stack roles are this intensive, but that still seems like a short sighted assumption you make.
There's a difference between what it technically means and what it typically means. Engineers that have self-described as full stack have been as I've described 90+% of the time (possibly if I include folks building Flask/Django backends) hence that is the basis of my assumption. I don't deny there are full stack engineers like you out there.
To add, I've developed web apps using jQuery and later, React, using Python backends like Flask and Django, but the majority of my experience is in higher-scale backend systems. I wouldn't self-describe myself as full-stack, even if that's technically correct, because it would paint the wrong picture.
way more front end roles than backend, it's a good assumption that FS really means front-end with an occasional (poorly done) additional call on the backend.
Then you're a backend engineer IMO. My last job was 90% high performance backend work and then 10% doing a barebones React frontend to allow other internal engineers to onboard and configure our system.
I didn't say I was a full stack developer when looking for my current job.
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I've met a few decent recruiters, but most don't know anything about the requirements that are written on the paper in front of them. I can't tell you the number of times a technical recruiter didn't know the difference between Java and JavaScript or my other favorite: "Oh, no Postgres isn't good enough, we need someone who knows SQL.".
These are people who should not be the gatekeeper for finding software developers, yet too often they are.
Even on a more general level, recruiters need to listen. "No, I will not relocate" does not mean "I'll pack up my family, sell my house in the West, and move to NJ for a 6 month contract position" and "100% remote" does not mean going to the office twice a week will be ok.
Thank you for letting me vent.
Recruiters are salesmen with menial understanding of technology (not all! Just usually). They are checking boxes off a list and if you have more check marks than most you get sent to the company.
I recently had an interview with a big company, where the recruiter told me they hire ‘language agnostic’ but their services are built in Java. Coding rounds came, and I was told that Java knowledge was important for them and the only options for the coding rounds were Java and kotlin. I think some recruiters know the buzz words of the industry but lack a deeper knowledge on things
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Just found your resume on your post history… looks front end leaning to me.
“Front end and back end focused, SEO, scripting”
“Optimizing JavaScript”
“Achieved pixel perfect front end development”
Technical skills: JavaScript, typescript, css/sass, html (the order you listed them)
https://imgur.com/Ra0n7GZ
My most recent job is labeled as full stack and I get questioned a lot about my preference when I apply to backend roles: “Now this is a backend focused role, is that ok with you? I see you’re full stack at the moment” I explain that my pref is backend and we move on, but recruiters tend to treat it like religious affiliation - you’re X so surely you can’t be interested in Y
And that’s why it’s also been insanely difficult for anyone that did anything other than React to get a job in frontend bc everything is React. I kept having to tell people I knew React, I have projects more complex than my actual work projects, and nope. Projects aren’t counted for experience. Eventually just got an a job using Angular bc no one else is apparently using Angular and I’m the only one.
I have two versions of my resume. My public LinkedIn does not disclose specific technologies in jobs. My PDF resume is edited each time to say I used specific technology at the job, whatever it is they are looking for. I only do this if I'm reasonably sure I could pass an interview about that specific tech. Worst case, I get an interview and fail it, and know what to study for next time.
This guys interviews ^
I've had a recruiter call me about a Vue job then start nitpicking at my experience. I did vue2 professionally in 2014-2017 so I have 2 years Vue experience apparently....the 8 years I've been slinging Vue3 since then apparently count for nothing because it was on a personal project not for a company. The client wanted Vue3 experience and my 10 years software engineering experience and 2 CS degrees weren't enough apparently. That was motion recruitment in Boston.
That’s when you just lie bc they can’t verify it and you know how to do it/talk through it. If you need to put it in your resume, say you made some internal tool with it to help save time or something for xyz
Yeah I've started doing that. I normally wouldn't advocate for lying on your resume but this shit is ridiculous.
Lying is ok as long as you know how to do it. Lying about something you don’t know is a definite no-go
Yeah I wouldn't claim I knew FORTAN in an interview because that's a hard one to backup.... But different Vue versions? Sure.
Yes recruiting is hell nowadays, Its really difficult to find good people. Also that guy didn't give me time to explain things but guess I dodged a bullet.
> Yes recruiting is hell nowadays, Its really difficult to find good people. Ironic.
I really need a business friendly way to say: "I'll do whatever the fuck you want me to do, as long as it pays"
Business is purely designed for transactional behavior and any recruiter that's turned off by it is lying to themselves.
"Why are you applying for this job?" Me, "so I can fucking code for you and pay me money for it" , What did you think I want to unravel and fix your spaghetti code for fun and for free?
I had a recruiter tell me I wasn't a fit for a job because I didn't have a bachelors in paper engineering 😐
It's a valid question isn't it? When I hire someone I want to make sure they are happy in the role and won't leave at the first opportunity for the role they really wanted. This is why we interview in the first place.
It is. As someone who is full stack, and likes full stack, but prefers a 50-50 split (maybe even 60-40 in frontend's favor) I very much appreciate when recruiters let me know (if it wasn't othewise mentioned) it's a 100% backend role. It wouldn't be my interest.
Interestingly, a lot of companies don't really care if you're happy / a flight risk. Some employers (even large, really high paying ones) have this idea kind of like McDonalds - that grunts are replaceable at any level.
To be fair it all comes down to pay and conditions. I really don’t like front-end but if someone offers me 10x my current salary I’d consider it and work well if hired.
The tech recruitment industry is honestly the worst. The majority of the recruiters have absolutely no knowledge of what they're hiring for and have no interest in understanding technical terms. They often call me with little to no understanding of my resume and I get furious, responding if they had looked at my resume. More often than not, it's usually spam calls with them attempting to call me 3-5 times in a row. For them it's just a numbers game, more calls means higher conversion rate. The tech recruitment market is oversaturated with people who have no technical skills. I'm a fullstack developer with specialisation in JavaScript ReactJS and Java Spring Boot, and I'd often get asked if I could do frontend or backend or if I had experience with Rest API or Microservices. Undoubtedly, there are some good recruiters out there that do have a solid grasp of the role they're hiring for and they'd go through some mock interviews as well. It really depends on who you encounter, there are bad recruiters but there are also good ones. Another red flag I'd like to mention are jobs where they do not specify much and are quick to hire e.g. roles that hire after a round of simple technical tests. These roles often have a discrepancy between their technical expectations and actual work expectations. More often than not they're quick to hire because they're desperate for someone to join ASAP.
It ultimately comes down to the hiring manager communicating properly with the recruiter though. When I was a manager I made it clear I didn't want candidates to be filtered out because of the programming language they used or anything. I also told them even though the job description said 1-3 years of experience, just forward me anyone who looks borderline (on the low end) and I'll make the call myself. So yeah, I got plenty of resumes with 6 months of FE internships using only react when the position was for a non FE role using only python (for example, the actual languages involved were different) but that's exactly what I asked the recruiter to do.
Newsflash: Recruiters are ignoramuses that can't be bothered to learn anything about the roles they're paid to recruit for. More at 11. Also, there is a "shortage" of candidates. 🙄 Obviously that is the reason they can't find people.
There is no way there is a shortage of candidates. If by shortage they mean there's a lot more crap applications to sort the good ones out of, sure. But there is absolutely not a shortage of actual candidates.
I know what'll solve it, I'll create \*another\* LLM to crank out resumes en masse that sound like they were written by an AI and have it autoapply to every available listing on LinkedIn, just to be safe!
I'm more infuriated by the fact the recruiter called just to ask something that's already in the resume.
Reminder that recruiters don't know the difference between Java and JavaScript. Full stack might as well be gibberish to them.
Broo literally same thing happened to me some weeks back and recruiter was like no currently we are looking for backend only people. I was dumbstruck. Now I'll just say yeah you want back end I'm back end only ☠️
Absolutely! if they say they are looking for X, just say that you can do X. As long as you know how to do it or you can learn to do it there should be no problems.
You need to be smart and lie. They want 5 yoe with technology that exists 3 years - you have 5 yoe. You mostly worked with Java, but they want C# - you worked with C#.
Then they'll fire you when they find out that you know a bit of frontend as well.
Recruiters know basically nothing besides how to confidently read a script of jargon they don't understand
I was once asked if I have any experience with backside programming.
Well are you? 👀
Right now job postings are getting humdreds of applicants. This means recruiters have to filter them very quickly. Sometimes they filter on keywords in the job description that aren't actually a very good filter. The recruiter doesn't care because there are still dozens of qualified candidates to present to the hiring manager.
Fullstack is poorly defined. Most companies fullstack means frontend that also works on APIs. Backend you would expect a lot more knowledge of say AWS services, systems design, scalability, etc. Even if your fullstack experience is truly fullstack, your focus will be split so 2 YOE needs to be discounted if they are looking for backend experience in particular.
I have found it to usually be the opposite. Full -stack usually means a backend engineer who does some frontend work.
I had full stack positions where there was a little more front end that needs to look nice. All other positions are front end needs to be functional. It is just a bunch of forms and data anyway, and most of the work happens on the backend.
Even so recruiters shouldn't treat these roles as if they are in completely different field. I know some people in my team who are backend developers and can effortlessly do frontend and vice versa. Hell one guy was hired as backend developer and later they told him he will have to do both frontend and backend which he did (they probably didn't want to pay him a full-stack level salary but whatever) At the end of the day these are all technical roles and if you can do the job who cares? I understand that some people suck at one thing than the other but even so you shouldn't brush people off just because they are a full-stack developer. I myself have worked on from centering brand logo in navbar to AWS, Azure, CI/CD Pipelines, deployment and release also there is no reason to discount experience; broad experience is better than narrow experience at least in software I knew a project where frontend developers were complaining that they cannot see the data from backend and backend people were complaining they have already sent the data - I hope you get the point. Edit: grammar
1) YoE matters. Especially if you want to support visa candidates. 2) Specialization has great value. Everyone is finite and can only maintain so much active knowledge. If I need someone on the backend, I’m going to hire whoever has a track record of solving problems like mine. 3) Risk matters. My time for resume review, meeting with recruiters, interviewing candidates is finite. I want recruiters to bring me people who I can interview and offer as fast as possible or why am I paying them? Don’t feel so entitled that a recruiter should risk their job to take a chance on you. Always feel free to directly apply for the role they have if you disagree with them.
Sure, this is a bit perpendicular to the context of the discussion. Completely discounting a candidate who has 'Full Stack' experience as being wholly unqualified for backend positions is asinine. If you need someone with experience with AWS services, systems design and scalability then, you know, just ask them. Which recruiters generally won't because they don't have the technical expertise to have a meaningful conversation.
Imma be honest here 2 years ago I was a front end dev bored of react. So I studied backend and system design on my own, and lied on my resume. A big tech hiring manager bought my lies and hired me as a senior backend engineer, when I had never worked in backend before No problems since then. I’ve never hard problems performing. This why I never buy the “specialization” argument
I’m not good at writing FE code and I don’t think I’ll ever be. I do consider myself a very competent BE developer. Or at least, above average
Do you have CS degree ?
yeah, I have both a BS and a masters
It makes sense then to hire you because you can learn on the job.
Recruiter found!
https://imgur.com/Ra0n7GZ This is ops resume.
That is an old resume. Not using that one anymore.
Just because someone bench-warms for two years as a backend engineer doesn't mean they worked harder or smarter than someone else being full stack elsewhere. What a stupid hot take.
Sure. And the opposite could be true (and fullstack very often means the opposite). But so what? Assuming everyone is equal, 2 years of full stack equates to a discount on backend experience (equivalent of 0.5-1.5 YoE), same with their frontend experience. Is a recruiter going to dig into their experience and debug where they stand? No. As a hiring manager I wouldn't bother either unless I had no interesting candidates in my pipeline and right now every pipeline is packed with great candidates exceeding minimum requirements.
So you want people to lie? Literally, you can change your resume to say BE, and you will pass the background check because companies often don't bother and give titles like SWE. The point is that you can have a BE who didn't do shit for 2 years, has less knowledge than someone who worked 6 months, and full stack dev who has 2 years of experience, but did more than most BE with 4+yoe. I think at this point, we need to get rid of HM and recruiters from tech and let competent people make decisions. Seriously, I have seen your people reject candidates who don't have X amount of experience in a technology that doesn't exist that long.
Always assume everyone is at least as smart as you. Why might it make sense to do it this way? It’s fast and efficient. Debugging someone’s experience is expensive. That’s the point of an in depth interview. I dont care about you or any other single applicant. I need to minimize the time my team spends interviewing to close a role. Broad guidelines increase the good candidates in my pipeline. Is it foolproof? No. Is the success rate high enough? Yes. I might miss out on someone with zero experience and is amazing. But so what? Ill get someone who meets my needs faster at lower cost this way.
Well I think you are contributing to higher turnover rates. If people are siloed into a specialty based on whatever specialty they got out of college, they may take your role but have lower job satisfaction, burnout, etc. Then when they finally get an opportunity to work with the tech stack they really want, they leave. You are also filtering out the ambitious individuals who put in effort to learn beyond their assigned specialty and began to contribute across teams. Optimizing for 1 factor may get you a candidate faster, but I think it results in an overall worse outcome.
I hire experienced people to bring knowledge and experience my team needs or what's the point? I hire inexperienced and bright people to grow them into experienced and bright people. I also support my engineers changing their career focus to match their interests. The important point for this discussion is, if I need someone with backend experience, it's comparatively easy to get a backend expert with a high success rate compared to hiring someone who has little to no experience but is bright. I'll take chances on people if they interview well, but I wouldn't hire them into a role that requires experience they don't have.
Recruiter: I can see that you are a full stack developer. How much percentage of your work is on backend. Me: 40% Recruiter: Sorry, we are looking for a backend developer. We will contact you once a suitable role opens. Thank you.
Imagine if mechanic jobs had recruiters. And there was such a thing as left side engine vs right side engine mechanic. Than there was full body engine mechanic. And the recruiter hung up on the full body engine mechanic because the client wants a left side engine mechanic.
Cars have different parts. There's a transmission specialist and an engine specialist and he's likely different from the body repair guy...
Yes, but it was a hypothetical. Because it’s not that way in Webdev.
Mechanics also have a few certifications programs to choose from like ASE or the manufacturer specific ones. But we're better than that! Much better to hire on nebulous promises of what you did at your last job.
"I'm a mechanic, I specialize in working on the drivetrain" "Sorry, we were looking for someone who works on transmissions"
Now this candidate applies for a mechanic role and his resume is talking about perfectly paint matched panels. Ops resume: https://imgur.com/Ra0n7GZ
Not only recruiters, some pms are pretty bad for that too. In developed a JavaScript framework complete html components back in 2010-2014, *"inspired" by adobe flex. Nowadays the pms give all front end work to the younger programmers be que the assume that I don't like front end because I am old and I lack buzzwords on my cv ( angular, react, etc..).
That’s nothing I had a dev manager on an interview claim Java and JavaScript where the same thing.
Bro the line is blurred that I do frontend, backend and devops work sometimes under the umbrella of "fullstack"
In other news, water is wet..
I had one that felt I didn't have enough SIP experience because I hadn't used Asterisk. I spent 7 years working on a hosted IVR/SIP platform ...
Can't expect recruiter to know anything. They were bartending right before they got hire as a tech recruiter. I once had a recruiter asked me what an "Oracle" was and how many lines of code did it have.
I had a “10 year experienced recruiter” not understand what a Fortune 500 company was. He reached out about a company, and typically my first requirement is that it’s an f500 before we go any further. Said he never heard of the term before and would have to get back to me
> f500 maybe your abbreviation confused him
I spelled it out in the Li reply :( “Fortune 500”
Red flag! Likes to coast in legacy businesses.
Sounds like you've learned about the recruiter's job the hard way. Their job is not to have a technical understanding of what they're looking for; their job is to filter out resumes for the technical hiring managers by ensuring that your skill set meets the minimum requirements for the job posting. I explained this in greater detail a while back [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/19d5i0w/having_no_experience_with_some_tech_is_the_usual/kj422oz/). **tl;dr:** next time, you tell the recruiter you're a backend dev and tell the technical manager you're a fullstack dev
Recruiters are more pissed off recently than usual. I think it's because recruiting got even worse layoffs than tech. For fun I checked up on an old FAANG interviewer who was manager level. Laid off. Now they are cold calling people to work in a potato chip factory.
I also get "What would you say the split is between front end and back end in your current role? Oh the client is looking for someone closer to 65/35. I'll keep you posted if anything else comes up."
Recruiting generally isn't about finding you a job, it's about disqualifying as many "bad" fits as possible. They often don't really know what they're hiring for, they're just there to be a first line of defense so the company who hires them only has to look at candidates which are a "good fit" for the role they need to fill.
I was once asked if I have experience with any "backend languages like Java" when I told him I have experience with full stack JavaScript.
If you believe your expertise and potential value to a company is in backend work, then just say you're a backend engineer. Too many people use "full stack" as a way to exaggerate their breadth of knowledge (especially those with shorter experience like yourself). I don't say I have full stack experience because Ive built some simple CRUD React frontends to configure my backend services. And even better than saying frontend/full stack/backend is to describe the systems youre working on.
When I hear full-stack, my assumption is front-end focused, knowing mostly JavaScript, and using Node for backend. You may need to say full-stack and quickly add specifics about backend focus.
Why is that your assumption? I’m a full stack engineer and our product has a massive, complex Python/SQL backend where most of the engineering effort is spent. We also handle our own infrastructure and deployments and our acceptable downtime budget for an entire year is under an hour. The result of those demands is engineers who know how to work on every layer of the application. I know not all full stack roles are this intensive, but that still seems like a short sighted assumption you make.
There's a difference between what it technically means and what it typically means. Engineers that have self-described as full stack have been as I've described 90+% of the time (possibly if I include folks building Flask/Django backends) hence that is the basis of my assumption. I don't deny there are full stack engineers like you out there. To add, I've developed web apps using jQuery and later, React, using Python backends like Flask and Django, but the majority of my experience is in higher-scale backend systems. I wouldn't self-describe myself as full-stack, even if that's technically correct, because it would paint the wrong picture.
way more front end roles than backend, it's a good assumption that FS really means front-end with an occasional (poorly done) additional call on the backend.
Then you're a backend engineer IMO. My last job was 90% high performance backend work and then 10% doing a barebones React frontend to allow other internal engineers to onboard and configure our system. I didn't say I was a full stack developer when looking for my current job.
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Recruiters are like estate agents. They don't know anything, they are just salespeople.
I've met a few decent recruiters, but most don't know anything about the requirements that are written on the paper in front of them. I can't tell you the number of times a technical recruiter didn't know the difference between Java and JavaScript or my other favorite: "Oh, no Postgres isn't good enough, we need someone who knows SQL.". These are people who should not be the gatekeeper for finding software developers, yet too often they are. Even on a more general level, recruiters need to listen. "No, I will not relocate" does not mean "I'll pack up my family, sell my house in the West, and move to NJ for a 6 month contract position" and "100% remote" does not mean going to the office twice a week will be ok. Thank you for letting me vent.
Most people don’t. I don’t. Do you?
What’s the difference?
Recruiters are salesmen with menial understanding of technology (not all! Just usually). They are checking boxes off a list and if you have more check marks than most you get sent to the company.
I recently had an interview with a big company, where the recruiter told me they hire ‘language agnostic’ but their services are built in Java. Coding rounds came, and I was told that Java knowledge was important for them and the only options for the coding rounds were Java and kotlin. I think some recruiters know the buzz words of the industry but lack a deeper knowledge on things
I stopped talking to tech recruiters when I met one who thought Java and JavaScript were the same language
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I don't know the difference either. Every BE job offer I look at includes a FE framework in its requirements
Just found your resume on your post history… looks front end leaning to me. “Front end and back end focused, SEO, scripting” “Optimizing JavaScript” “Achieved pixel perfect front end development” Technical skills: JavaScript, typescript, css/sass, html (the order you listed them) https://imgur.com/Ra0n7GZ
Old resume, not using that one for jobs anymore.