"You are an X developer and the employee asked you to learn Y" - You can say no at anytime, you have a choice! So it is not a scam, you just accepted to fill a more general role.
"You have to know 2-3 times more technologies", true, but you know them at a basic-intermediate level, it's understandable and accepted by the employer to not be great at either jobs (back/front) if you are full stack.
Your salary research may need some tweaks, you compared only 2 terms, there are many synonyms for those positions (web developer for front end, full stack web developer ...) and different names for US/EU.
You do not have to earn twice as much because the amount of knowledge and expertise is not double, instead of learning all SCSS commands by heart you can learn some AWS basic commands (and look the rest up whenever you needed), instead of learning 5-10 types of embedding an imagine in HTML you learn how docker works, it is always a trade off.
To add salt to the wound, some employers requires you to be "full stack developer" as in to do mobile apps as well (front end is web AND mobile), beside the back end.
So no, it is not a scam, it is just a different type of developer, generalist, when you will build a startup you will understand the need of general specific roles.
Most of all the positions are not exclusive, when the project gets bigger you can afford to get specialist (back end, front end, architects, dev-ops) and still keeping the full stack devs for their unique view and expertise (from a more abstract level, that bridges all those specialists).
PS: we, the "full stack devs" are not a myth, we exists, we build all rounded apps alone, from bottom up in record time 😎 and all these new technologies like cloud, kubernetes, serverless, Flutter and managed services just feed our job and allow us to tackle even bigger projects without specialists (ofc in the small-medium ranged projects scope).
True, there may be some cases, but I don't think the technologies were the root of the problem here, or the company, I suspect a mix of:
he/she didn't evaluated properly his/her value on the market (get a job similar with the "expert in tech X" or get a raise). Usually happens because devs don't go to interviews until it's too late.
he/she is stubborn, too attached (or from other reasons); knows that it's underpaid and still remain there
"tech X" has too few specialized positions left (Cobol or jQuery?! :)) ), so it cannot move to a better paying jobs (they are all taken) and she/he doesn't want to move to a new technology
It is an issue, but it's the developers issue that can be easily solved (in most of the cases). Even if the geographic or other conditions don't allow an easy fix (too few jobs in the area), maybe he/she can work remote or go freelancing. Being the devils advocate here, but (most of us) live in capitalism, it's not the company fault (that wants to make more profit) it's the ppl that accept the conditions (and losing money by not doing anything).
I have former colleagues that have this issue, they know it but don't do anything to fix it. In the end I blame it on the human side of us, we are too reluctant to change, and the industry is changing too fast, faster than we can change ... and some of us got tired of learning new ways every 6 months (damn you web).
PS: I'm all in in creation of syndicates, that would fight in our benefit on these matters with the companies.
Thank you for your in depth reply. Really appreciate it.
My post of course requires more research, my points are almost invalid in front of such strong replies.
That being said, Full stack developers exist for sure, I myself a proof of that and I am proud of being one, however, I worry for those who know more, do more, but being paid absolutely less than others just for being generalist. As if they are expected to do more.
The overall value is getting lower in many cases, the quality is dropping. Later it will affect on other web dev positions and then all web development sector is gonna fall for that. The internet will show us in meantime. The shady faces of slavery management companies.
All that is true, but our jobs "exists" to solve business problems so it comes down to money
If the company wants 1 developer instead of 2 they will get mostly:
lower costs (let's say 40-50% smaller salary)
lower quality (around about 30-60%, depends a lot on the developer expertise)
then they form a market that will be filled by workers that needs a job.
As for the quality you can see it best in the security field, almost no business owner cares about it until something happen, and then they forget after a few months, and I keep saying we reached a state in that a good "ML bot written by hackers scientists" can easily hack into 50% of the current running websites.
I think the word "slavery" doesn't fit in our line of work that is described by:
staying at a computer all day
having all kind of perks
not having to even apply to jobs because we are assaulted by offers and HR hunters
9-17 job
job security (I haven't heard of a fired developer)
high salaries
Most of the industries only dreams at such a job, be respectful and appreciate what you have.
I for one am ashamed to disclose my salary (and I am not a top earner in my peers) to people that are not in our industry, they often have 2 jobs and only get half of my salary. Sure I "work" too but the really work with physical related jobs. Even the fact that we have the time to chat on this website is a proof that we have:
free time ( so we don't over work)
care about higher more abstract concepts
so we solved our basic primary needs like food, electricity and so on
These are really common now a days. The seniors can take care of it, and don't see the bad side, the juniors learn the hard way.
I must also mention that everyone will have a different perspective. For some it is a heavenly job, for some it's a nightmare.
Looking down on workers
Few days ago I was in a call with some client meetup. All of their talk was like honey, the budget seemed really healthy, their attitude was respectable. Except they seemed to look down on many things that a developer cares about.
They said things like Well, the error logs doesn't matter much, And then continued recently it stops working frequently and we don't know the exact reason.
From the look of the code, it seemed they did not pay the previous developer that much, was giving really tight schedule and the developer ended up with very poor code, no unit tests and then left the project because he couldn't take it anymore.
Outsourced works
Most outsourced web development works are done for very low rate, thus the quality also decreases thousandfold. The web is polluted with such low quality stuff where everyone is just trying to trick each other.
Client X has $100k budget for app, his project manager starts outsourcing it for $10k to a different team, keeps the rest of money, the team then starts paying the developer $1k. It is indeed a field where some shines, and some gets scammed.
I like how those developers don't get the benefit the other developers are having being on the good developed country.
This is altogether a different issue, but is related to the full stack since the overall web is build by the developers hard work.
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"You are an X developer and the employee asked you to learn Y" - You can say no at anytime, you have a choice! So it is not a scam, you just accepted to fill a more general role.
"You have to know 2-3 times more technologies", true, but you know them at a basic-intermediate level, it's understandable and accepted by the employer to not be great at either jobs (back/front) if you are full stack.
Your salary research may need some tweaks, you compared only 2 terms, there are many synonyms for those positions (web developer for front end, full stack web developer ...) and different names for US/EU.
You do not have to earn twice as much because the amount of knowledge and expertise is not double, instead of learning all SCSS commands by heart you can learn some AWS basic commands (and look the rest up whenever you needed), instead of learning 5-10 types of embedding an imagine in HTML you learn how docker works, it is always a trade off.
To add salt to the wound, some employers requires you to be "full stack developer" as in to do mobile apps as well (front end is web AND mobile), beside the back end.
So no, it is not a scam, it is just a different type of developer, generalist, when you will build a startup you will understand the need of general specific roles.
Most of all the positions are not exclusive, when the project gets bigger you can afford to get specialist (back end, front end, architects, dev-ops) and still keeping the full stack devs for their unique view and expertise (from a more abstract level, that bridges all those specialists).
PS: we, the "full stack devs" are not a myth, we exists, we build all rounded apps alone, from bottom up in record time 😎 and all these new technologies like cloud, kubernetes, serverless, Flutter and managed services just feed our job and allow us to tackle even bigger projects without specialists (ofc in the small-medium ranged projects scope).
The issue is when you are better then the expert in tech X, and worse than the average expert in Y, yet you get a lower salary than both of them.
True, there may be some cases, but I don't think the technologies were the root of the problem here, or the company, I suspect a mix of:
It is an issue, but it's the developers issue that can be easily solved (in most of the cases). Even if the geographic or other conditions don't allow an easy fix (too few jobs in the area), maybe he/she can work remote or go freelancing. Being the devils advocate here, but (most of us) live in capitalism, it's not the company fault (that wants to make more profit) it's the ppl that accept the conditions (and losing money by not doing anything).
I have former colleagues that have this issue, they know it but don't do anything to fix it. In the end I blame it on the human side of us, we are too reluctant to change, and the industry is changing too fast, faster than we can change ... and some of us got tired of learning new ways every 6 months (damn you web).
PS: I'm all in in creation of syndicates, that would fight in our benefit on these matters with the companies.
Thank you for your in depth reply. Really appreciate it.
My post of course requires more research, my points are almost invalid in front of such strong replies.
That being said, Full stack developers exist for sure, I myself a proof of that and I am proud of being one, however, I worry for those who know more, do more, but being paid absolutely less than others just for being generalist. As if they are expected to do more.
The overall value is getting lower in many cases, the quality is dropping. Later it will affect on other web dev positions and then all web development sector is gonna fall for that. The internet will show us in meantime. The shady faces of slavery management companies.
All that is true, but our jobs "exists" to solve business problems so it comes down to money
If the company wants 1 developer instead of 2 they will get mostly:
As for the quality you can see it best in the security field, almost no business owner cares about it until something happen, and then they forget after a few months, and I keep saying we reached a state in that a good "ML bot written by hackers scientists" can easily hack into 50% of the current running websites.
I think the word "slavery" doesn't fit in our line of work that is described by:
Most of the industries only dreams at such a job, be respectful and appreciate what you have.
I for one am ashamed to disclose my salary (and I am not a top earner in my peers) to people that are not in our industry, they often have 2 jobs and only get half of my salary. Sure I "work" too but the really work with physical related jobs. Even the fact that we have the time to chat on this website is a proof that we have:
These are really common now a days. The seniors can take care of it, and don't see the bad side, the juniors learn the hard way.
I must also mention that everyone will have a different perspective. For some it is a heavenly job, for some it's a nightmare.
Looking down on workers
Few days ago I was in a call with some client meetup. All of their talk was like honey, the budget seemed really healthy, their attitude was respectable. Except they seemed to look down on many things that a developer cares about.
They said things like
Well, the error logs doesn't matter much, And then continuedrecently it stops working frequently and we don't know the exact reason.From the look of the code, it seemed they did not pay the previous developer that much, was giving really tight schedule and the developer ended up with very poor code, no unit tests and then left the project because he couldn't take it anymore.
Outsourced works
Most outsourced web development works are done for very low rate, thus the quality also decreases thousandfold. The web is polluted with such low quality stuff where everyone is just trying to trick each other.
Client X has $100k budget for app, his project manager starts outsourcing it for $10k to a different team, keeps the rest of money, the team then starts paying the developer $1k. It is indeed a field where some shines, and some gets scammed.
I like how those developers don't get the benefit the other developers are having being on the good developed country.
This is altogether a different issue, but is related to the full stack since the overall web is build by the developers hard work.