Getting out of UI development

Adobe
DXfR85

Go to company page Adobe

DXfR85
Jul 21, 2020 5 Comments

I believe that UI engineering is commoditized and arguments to the contrary are mostly cope. I know many people who study a few months and become UI devs, I’ve never heard of this happening for fields like OS development.

UI engineering has a lower salary cap because deep expertise is 1. impossible (things change too fast) and 2. not valuable because cost of mistakes is low (bugs easily rolled back, no data loss potential).

So I’d like to direct my career away from UI toward higher value niches.

Has anyone successfully navigated down the stack starting as a Frontend dev? Ideally I’d like to work close to the metal in something like kernel dev, compilers or darabases development. I’m willing to do this in several stages i.e, ui -> api -> backend infra -> X

5

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
  1. TOP
  2. RECENT
  3. OLD
 TOP 5 Comments
  • I've spent the last decade in web UI, mastering dozens of frameworks, browsers, libraries etc etc. I'm making around 480k at LinkedIn doing it. If you can keep on top of all of the changes and discern order from the madness you'll be very valuable
    Jul 21, 2020 2
  • Salesforce / Eng
    HC_Verma

    Go to company page Salesforce Eng

     HC_Verma
    "UI engineering has lower salary cap"

    - This isn't necessary true. At FANG UI engineers get paid equally compared to backend.(if you are good enough to get into FANG, you are good enough to get paid well)

    "Not valuable because cost of mistakes is low"

    - This is absolutely wrong. imagine writing a code that'd break "share" functionality on FB or "buy now" PayPal checkout.

    There's a lot of generalizations made in your original statement. The key here is being an expert in your craft and working on customer facing (high impact) product. Rest will flow.
    Jul 21, 2020 0
  • Workday
    aWzF85

    Go to company page Workday

    aWzF85
    Oh man! Good front end engineer is very hard to hire. It’s easy to enter the field but it’s not easy to be really good.
    I know people who get paid more than BE because there are not many people who have the skills.
    Jul 21, 2020 0