ℹ️ This is an article, I wrote last year on Medium.
Right now, as I am writing this, I am the only frontend developer on my team. This means that ...
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Hey Steffen, I was in a similar situation a few months ago.
I was in a team with 20 devs, 3 front end developers of which I was the only one versed on recent technologies like React, Angular, ES6+, CSS3, etc.
The rest of the team were people working in Java who kind of understood TS, some basic CSS and picked up Angular without a lot of effort. The problem was that they were not aware of how to measure or optimize the performance of websites on mobile devices, and were reluctant to use React.
The HR people were actively looking for Senior Front Developers, Senior, meaning someone with hands on experience on the technologies listed above.
On the mean time, I focused on getting the team up to speed with modern ES6, FP and a better understanding of what the Front End is nowadays.
What I found was that the team was interested but they just did not know how nor where to start. We did Lunch and Learn meetings for a month, it was not enough time, but eventually some devs joined the team.
Thank you for your comment 😃
Your story sounds almost exactly like mine. I wrote this article last year. A few months after, I had a total break down. Today, we have a much different environment in my team. We are much more open, and everybody is helping everybody. What really helped was being open to each other. I even went directly to my boss. I said that something had to happen. I can also recommend pair programming. I actually have an extra set of keyboard and mouse on my desk connected to my computer. People can just come up to me and work 😃
By the way, we also have Lunch and Learn. We just call it Talent Talks. We sometimes have Beer and Learn - even though people are just drinking sodas 🤓
This sounds like a hiring problem more than a technical challenge.
It's not reasonable for you to have to push Backend Developers to become Full-Stack developers, but that may be your only option unless you can get your management to replace the Frontend developer who left.
Another option for management is to hire a beginning Frontend developer instead of an experienced developer. I see this as preferable to converting a Backend developer, since a beginner can learn your exact stack without other team commitments to steal their time.
The amount of frontend related issues goes up and down. We're kinda unique on that point 😅 But I get your point. Thank you for your comment.