Is web front end inferior to other engs?

Jun 19, 2021 16 Comments

Now before you immediately object to me, please hear me out. I was a web front end developer in a product team doing consumer-facing features with ReactJS. However, the traffic nowadays has shifted very heavily to mobile and web was always less of a priority than iOS and Android. A lot of times designer didn't even bother drawing web UI, or we don't plan for web at all. The same experience was observed by some of my friends from other companies. (Some products may still heavily rely on web though, like Google Docs, YouTube, etc, and some business products.)

Plus, web engineers in general are doing an easier job than their iOS and Android counterparts. JavaScript is just a simple, single-threaded, scripting language. For a long time web has been regarded as an easier and better starting point for people who don't have software development experience before. The web engineers don't usually need to face resource constraints and app release cycles on mobile, and just write simple code in frameworks like React (again I'm referring to web product engs, not those infra people who work on lower level). I was able to finish my web part more quickly than the mobile engs in my team, and since web got so low attention, I was often left with nothing to do while my manager thought I was doing a great job finishing projects faster.

So all in all, web seems to be an easy job that pays equally well with other types of engs, and enjoy easier career progression than others. Theoretically, I think you can get an easier promotion to senior/staff level being a web eng in product team, start leading people, and eventually transition to a manager role so your techical skills doesn't matter any more. Do you agree?

This is just my current opinion and I know many web engs will be very unhappy. So please correct me if I am wrong. I myself really wanted to do web front end before, but just didn't see much demand on many products any more.

#web #frontend #ios #android

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TOP 16 Comments
  • I don't know why is javascript still considered or seen lowly . Makes sense for people who are of dinosaur era me being a young developer. Can see js everywhere. Browser, server, mobile app other platforms but these 3 a re big. Then you have PWA it seems you are a 15 YOE developer and don't know how JS have evolved over a year. React does composition stuff and there are some interesting patterns. Which require you to be a good software engineer. I know BE has it's own challenges and all but call FE is just being delusional or in denial . Thinking js as HTML and CSS is absurd.
    Jun 19, 2021 1
  • Amazon
    FEef74

    Go to company page Amazon

    FEef74
    If you think it's easy, you're most likely yet to know a lot. IMO It's common while learning anything new. After knowing a little you think you know it all, but soon after spending few more years learning that skill you realize how deep you're still to go. For example, for folks working on backend, intially it's mostly just CRUD, until you realize there's LB, sharding, zookeeper etc.

    Let me put it in practical way. Go through these widely known scenarios and see if it looks easy enough. If it does you're proficient. Otherwise you know where you're.

    - How would you create something like google docs? (think about whole experience and how JS can be used to enable that)
    - How do you minify css? (Very common, think of the requirements first)
    - How do you build whiteboard? (Say zoom whiteboard or Google meet whiteboard, think how you'll use data stream to render correctly and smoothen the rendered result for readability)
    - how do you monitor you FE app performance ( which metrics to collect and how)
    Jun 20, 2021 4
    • OP
      Removing white spaces won’t even be considered as CSS minification in my opinion… and right if you need to write your own css minification there are a lot to consider. However, in my experience, I’ve never had to implement it myself. It’s always been taken care of by infra team or libraries. And it doesn’t make sense either for every FE to implement their own CSS minifying completely.
      Jun 21, 2021
    • Amazon
      FEef74

      Go to company page Amazon

      FEef74
      You're right but then no stack is challenging if you keep relying on abstractions. Idea was to share some interesting problems which are commonly encountered in FE.
      Jun 21, 2021
  • Wish
    crisjerico

    Go to company page Wish

    crisjerico
    Whether it is or not, I’m getting paid 400k to only write js css and HTML πŸ™ˆ
    Jun 22, 2021 1
    • Oracle
      knockout

      Go to company page Oracle

      knockout
      How much years experience do you have ?
      How did you clear your FE interviews?
      How did you convince you are worth 400k for FE job ?
      Jul 24, 2021
  • New
    YGvp37

    New

    YGvp37
    Because JS isn't a real language and using it for anything serious is insane
    Jun 19, 2021 2
    • Care to explain why big tech companies are moving some of there BE API to nodejs . Are they too dumb? Or you the only smart engineer around here ?you do know single threaded has it's own advantages . If you don't then no point arguing with a noob
      Jun 19, 2021
    • And do explain me what a real language means . πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚ I want to get enlightened
      Jun 19, 2021
  • I agree with you on the point that career progression in front-end is much more easier and faster as compared to backend. It has its own advantages and opportunities: 1) You can get in good product based companies more easily.
    2) You can start your contribution to open-source projects where the fun game starts (javascript open-source community is super active) and get worldwide visibility, participate in the conference talks.
    So, with comparatively lesser competition you can stive to be one of the best frontend engineers.
    I also started as a frontend engineer, and felt at times that it was given lesser importance.
    But when I see good frontend engineers like Dan Abramov, Sarah Drasner, Kent C. Dotts who are given huge respect in the community due to their contributions, I feel good.
    Also web or javascript is definitely not going away any soon.
    Almost each tech company needs a ui/ javascript developer. Javascript is on the server side (nodejs) and mobile (react-native) too.
    So, it's no way inferior to other technologies.
    It only gets limited if you restrict yourself to the average deliverables or regular project work.
    Jun 19, 2021 0