Is Front End a career hack?

Amazon
cjd z7:&:

Go to company page Amazon

cjd z7:&:
Aug 22, 2021 64 Comments

Across several companies, I observe:
Same TC as backend.
Less oncall issues.
Better WLB

Any1 make the jump to FE for these reasons?

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TOP 64 Comments
  • Lower tc at fb. Front end engineer is not SWE
    Aug 22, 2021 6
  • JPMorgan Chase / Eng
    f1ntech

    Go to company page JPMorgan Chase Eng

    f1ntech
    A lot of salty backend devs on this thread. Superiority complex is palpable.

    Bottom line - FE engineers are paid on par with SWE at FAANG. A lot of reasons for this.

    Good front end devs with senior level experience are very rare and currently at high demand.

    Also, there is a lot more tech churn in the FE is constant. Take testing libraries for an example. Since starting 2015, I have used Jasmine, mocha/chai/Sinon, karma, protractor for angular. Those have been dumped in favor for jest, enzyme, and testing library (yeah, thatโ€™s the name of it) and cypress will likely be the new and shiny hotness. In ruby, you have rspec. In Java, j unit and mockito.

    And then there are module bundlers - web pack, roll up, snow pack, vite.

    And css - sass, less, css-in-js, scoped css, css modules.

    I havenโ€™t even mentioned frameworks yet. React and redux code from 2 years ago is effectively deprecated. Get the point?

    Also, more churn in front end design. As mentioned previously, every PO canโ€™t help to change design mid sprint. Move this button here, some extra margin there, etc. also means more work for me.

    Mix in the fact that a lot of bad front end code has been cobbled together by fresh boot camp grads and will need maintenance / refactoring, and you have the recipe for ideal job security and great TC.
    Aug 22, 2021 2
    • Google / Eng
      keklolkek

      Go to company page Google Eng

      keklolkek
      What happened to React and Redux?
      Aug 22, 2021
    • JPMorgan Chase / Eng
      f1ntech

      Go to company page JPMorgan Chase Eng

      f1ntech
      React class components are being replaced with hooks and redux now uses an abstracted layer called redux toolkit and also has new concepts like โ€œslicesโ€. All of that newness on top of the old newness makes codebases that combine all of the above very annoying to mentally parse.
      Aug 22, 2021
  • PayPal / Eng
    id5oxy9

    Go to company page PayPal Eng

    PRE
    SAP
    id5oxy9
    FE these days is much more than just aligning divs, writing good, flexible and maintainable FE code requires quite some skills tbh
    Aug 22, 2021 2
    • Amazon
      cjd z7:&:

      Go to company page Amazon

      cjd z7:&:
      OP
      yes code is often similar to back end due to those frameworks. Main difference is the system design part and perhaps working w/ databases more directly
      Aug 22, 2021
    • New
      beloAvgDev

      New

      beloAvgDev
      with the coming of GraphQL, the working with databases directly might change (this is what I have been hearing)
      Aug 22, 2021
  • Microsoft / Eng
    TC = ๐Ÿฅœ๐Ÿฅฒ

    Go to company page Microsoft Eng

    TC = ๐Ÿฅœ๐Ÿฅฒ
    FE today is pretty hard tbh. BE engineers with superiority complex about FE are just ignorant. There's a reason we are paid as much as anyone in tech.
    Aug 22, 2021 1
  • Do you want to align divs and margins for designers and PMs, never ending tasks. Backend is atleast clear if it works or not. Front end is subjective so itโ€™s never complete
    Aug 22, 2021 5
    • I have done both. Front end takes way more time since it involves design which is subjective. Also since itโ€™s visual everyone has an opinion from manager to CEO. With backend as long as it works ppl donโ€™t hassle you
      Aug 22, 2021
    • New
      microSoft?

      New

      microSoft?
      Right backend is a lot more objective I enjoy it much more. But if you like fe do your thing . That's why there are multiple disciplines so we can specialize in the tech we like
      Aug 23, 2021