Is front end engineer inferior
I was a backend SWE with a focus on distributed system. I got an full stack opportunity with much better pay. I would love to try out full stack but feels like frontend/fullstack are somewhat inferior than backend engineers (I could be wrong that's why I started this thread) I am not super ambitious but still would love to make it to staff/principal level at the end of my career. Frontend/full stack folks, do you feel like your career is limited because of the focus on frontend? As a fullstack engineer, is it harder to reach senior/staff level comparing to backend folks?
I’ve always felt front end gets way too much credit for what they do. The measurement is it looks nice so they must have done a good job. Meanwhile backend gets almost nothing and has to work much harder to get ahead.
I agree that fullstack/front end folks have an edge when presenting the result. However, I don't see a lot of very senior fullstack engineers around. Seems like most principal level engineers have a backend focus.
From the end-user perspective all that matters is the UI, so probably more credit if users are happy. It’s always good to be full stack, so you get to appreciate both worlds. Also no matter how stunning the UI is, if the backend isn’t resilient the same users will start complaining about UI being bad/unresponsive ✌️Oh and definitely not inferior given how fast the front end tech stack evolves.
Depends on your company. But regarding the "inferiority," a lot of front end engineers suck ass, but there are a lot of excellent backend engineers.The ratio of shit to best engineers for front end is probably 10:1, while backend is 1:10.
Full stack is a lie. There I said it. Modern frontend is complex and requires just as much skill as backend, plus the tech is constantly in flux. To me a good frontend and a good backend eng are on the same level. Nobody truly does full stack, they are either a subpar FE or a subpar BE or both. And if your company does node at the backend, think about a new job.
Node is fun
What's wrong with node? And what do you suggest in its place? Thanks
Any engineer married to a tool or methodology is bad.
There's no front end / back end / full stack for a true software engineer. Its all the same. Btw, if anyone thinks front end is all about HTML, CSS, then I feel sorry for you. The modem front end has changed lot grandma.
That's what I realized and raise the question of the difference between Frontend and UI. If people said "Frontend is UI" then we know they lived in the past.
Making principal isn't always about being very technical, in fact most of the time it is about delivery high business value consistently. So frontend backend doesn't matter. Traditionally there were more challenges on backend so more principals are strong backend folks as opposed to frontend, at least at older large companies. But nowadays frontend systems are very complex and a frontend specialist can deliver a ton of value. Moreover, in today's frontend there's different tracks (UI/UX, performance, architecture etc) and each track has a lot of value to deliver.
You can be full stack, but you need to show proficiency in creating backend business and data layer logic. Conceptualize features from backend and then work towards the frontend.
I consider myself proficient on backend and overall service architecture. From my understanding, being senior/staff engineer requires fairly deep domain knowledge, that's why I feel like and am afraid that being a fullstack engineer will hold me back.
Doesn't matter what you did before. It all depends on what work you are doing now and how well you own it in your new role. It's up to you to work towards becoming an SME for the features you work on