From my experience all too often companies try to hire on-guy-does-it-all solution for most of their problems.
We have worked at different companies. All of the companies I have worked for have been hiring exclusively backend or front-end. Before I get into sharing my responses to your response, I think it’s important to state that we come from different experiences and therefore it’s totally possible that both our opinions are valid. To put it another way, the truth is probably somewhere between your opinion and mine.
That's why we have tech-bros claiming that you should "only learn JS" because the other stuff "doesn't matter" and "CSS sucks anyway" totally invalidating Front-Enders
I like lots of different languages, and I always encourage a team to pick what works for them. So I can say that even though I am by-design a full stack developer, I’ve never purposely tried to invalidate another developer. In fact, every couple of years I purposely ask to join a different team in a different language so I can step in someone else’s shoes for a while. I’ve already told my manager that the next team I’d like to work on is the Kotlin/Swift team at my company that builds our mobile app.
That's why many companies hire backenders (or JS-ninjas) only, because they think that HTML/CSS are easy and everyone can do it.
You lost me there a little bit because most JS devs have familiarity with HTML and CSS right? And most people that have tried it know how challenging it is. So I always try to evangelize at my company how important and difficult the UI work actually is. But maybe I just have a lot of empathy for UI development because I’ve done it for so long. I think that was my major point: don’t try to speak on behalf of another group of people until you’ve tried their job. I spent half a decade being a backend developer, another half decade as a front-end developer, and now I do whatever the user needs. And along the way I do my best to fight for my peers.
That's why Front-End jobs get paid less.
Yea, I have no idea why that is. Maybe managers don’t have enough experience in UI development to be able to empathize with the craft of UI development. I don’t know, but it’s silly for me to guess why the salary difference exists. I personally hope it becomes equal to backend work (or that it works like it does at my current company where it’s just “Software Engineer” with no distinction so that developers can change as their interests change).
This why Semantic structures in HTML tend to be ignored more and more making the web less accessible to many users that would need it.
I hear you. I ran a 2 year long a11y seminar at my last company that was designed to show any and all developer who was interested in attending about the value of markup for accessibility.
That's why co-workers of me are being made fun of for using PHP.
I’m sorry that they’ve made fun of you. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.
And this in the end is not what "building bridges" looks like - this is gatekeeping.
I’m not familiar with the term gatekeeping, but I will refer you to the many other comments in this thread of other people who identify as “full stack” who are desperately seeking to be seen. My article was designed to shine a light on those who like being a generalist. Ultimately, I want people of all skills and interests to be welcome to bring their skills to the table to help the user. I’m sad that this wasn’t clear in the article. Do you have any advice on how I could have made that more apparent? I’ll make sure to improve it in future articles.
Also: "team morale through empathizing, domain knowledge transfer, better estimates since everyone has passing familiarity with each layer of the stack, people helping out..." isn't a matter of everyone doing the same stuff (to some degree) but a matter of respecting each others capabilities and different skillsets and eager communication don't you think?
Yes. I absolutely 100% agree.
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We have worked at different companies. All of the companies I have worked for have been hiring exclusively backend or front-end. Before I get into sharing my responses to your response, I think it’s important to state that we come from different experiences and therefore it’s totally possible that both our opinions are valid. To put it another way, the truth is probably somewhere between your opinion and mine.
I like lots of different languages, and I always encourage a team to pick what works for them. So I can say that even though I am by-design a full stack developer, I’ve never purposely tried to invalidate another developer. In fact, every couple of years I purposely ask to join a different team in a different language so I can step in someone else’s shoes for a while. I’ve already told my manager that the next team I’d like to work on is the Kotlin/Swift team at my company that builds our mobile app.
You lost me there a little bit because most JS devs have familiarity with HTML and CSS right? And most people that have tried it know how challenging it is. So I always try to evangelize at my company how important and difficult the UI work actually is. But maybe I just have a lot of empathy for UI development because I’ve done it for so long. I think that was my major point: don’t try to speak on behalf of another group of people until you’ve tried their job. I spent half a decade being a backend developer, another half decade as a front-end developer, and now I do whatever the user needs. And along the way I do my best to fight for my peers.
Yea, I have no idea why that is. Maybe managers don’t have enough experience in UI development to be able to empathize with the craft of UI development. I don’t know, but it’s silly for me to guess why the salary difference exists. I personally hope it becomes equal to backend work (or that it works like it does at my current company where it’s just “Software Engineer” with no distinction so that developers can change as their interests change).
I hear you. I ran a 2 year long a11y seminar at my last company that was designed to show any and all developer who was interested in attending about the value of markup for accessibility.
I’m sorry that they’ve made fun of you. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.
I’m not familiar with the term gatekeeping, but I will refer you to the many other comments in this thread of other people who identify as “full stack” who are desperately seeking to be seen. My article was designed to shine a light on those who like being a generalist. Ultimately, I want people of all skills and interests to be welcome to bring their skills to the table to help the user. I’m sad that this wasn’t clear in the article. Do you have any advice on how I could have made that more apparent? I’ll make sure to improve it in future articles.
Yes. I absolutely 100% agree.