Elly LoelFront-end development’s identity crisis
🔗 https://ellyloel.com/blog/front-end-development-s-identity-crisis/
🔗 https://ellyloel.com/blog/front-end-development-s-identity-crisis/
I have a dilemma. I'm trying to find a job but the job I'm looking for no longer exists. I'm a front-end developer. Which to me means I work on the user interface of the website. But now in our industry front-end means the same thing as full-stack. 1/2
Front-end developer job descriptions include many back-end duties. There are almost always even more back-end duties than there are front-end. This is because the industry has devalued front-end development. To the point where it's no longer considered complex or time-consuming enough to be a full-time job. 2/2
Ben
Katie Sylor-Miller
Mark Gardner@elly I feel your pain, but the battle was lost as soon as #developers started self-identifying as #FrontEnd or #BackEnd specialists. We asked for it.
And here’s where I shake my old “webmaster” cane and mutter about staying off my lawn: I started #WebDev in 1995 when skills were so new and thinly distributed that specialization was nigh impossible. It’s freakin’ *hard* to keep up with the ever-exploding web technology stack, but it can be done.
Don’t lose hope.
Keev@elly
you can still apply for graphic designer, UI /UX specialist, specific tools as Drupal, Wordpress, Magento guy, etc
you can still apply for graphic designer, UI /UX specialist, specific tools as Drupal, Wordpress, Magento guy, etc
Niels van Rongen@elly This all sounds very relatable. Lately I’ve felt the need to explain my job to higher ups, because based on their decisions and talks I had, they have no clue what we do, or are supposed to do. I try not to mention ‘front-of-the-front’ anymore (it doesn’t make sense outside of frontend circles) and just made a list of things we do. It’s a fucking long list. From (light) Python to TypeScript, CSS, accessibility and design systems. Who’s the full stack developer now?
@elly in my experience the higher ups thought I was “making things pretty”, but not exactly like a ‘real’ designer (people working with Figma). The amount of talks I had in the last year where I try to explain what it is I do, my expectations and it’s value for the company, while I suspect they still don’t fully understand, is exhausting. In the end I touch so many ‘stacks’, that it angers me when they think I only make things look ‘pretty’ and need to expand 🙄.
M@ Bntn 🗽@elly I feel this in my bones. I just got reorged from a front-end supervisor position to an engineering individual contributor role.
I’m working on a big ecomm project while learning react, and the amount of non-UI problems the entire team is responsible for as “developers” is wild.
Actual UI polish, performance, accessibility can’t really bubble up to experts or receive intentional focus in this type of blending of roles.
@elly Also, this is the first long-form blog post I’ve read sing “Market for Lemons”, so thanks for writing!
Matthew@elly There are places that have entirely avoided React and the whole ecosystem, and carried on with what we always have done, trying to build performant accessible websites with good HTML/CSS, JS on top, backend doing its thing. Where I work is hopefully one such: https://www.mysociety.org with eg https://github.com/mysociety/fixmystreet So don’t give up hope :)
Jay Cruz@elly I have concluded, un-scientifically of course, that the early aught’s role of Web Designer/Frontend Developer, or as Brad Frost has renamed it, Front of the Frontend, is more of a niche, and that very few people get paid to sling HTML and CSS from scratch to make static websites, or even “appy-like" sites, like in a formal job in a company were the title includes Developer or Engineer. https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-great-divide-is-dead-why-theres-no-such-thing-as-entry-level-frontend-05f8d68a0f9a?sk=e427e6c0b5475e8ea586d38325ee089a
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💉*10 Roger@elly from the other end: I've picked up contracts described as 'full stack' when I made it clear I'm a back end dev. I don't do front-end well. But it turned out they actually wanted a back end dev anyway. It puzzled me why they described the role as full stack.
KJRS-10 (330 ppm)@elly I was also a 'front-of-the-front-end' developer, and (luckily for me!) pivoted to teaching at a technical college in 2017. But our program has always been about Web Design (that's its title) and we teach front-of-the-front-end. In a 2-year program with design included, there isn't time to prep students to be 'full stack.' We focus on HTML, CSS, vanilla JS but have a libraries/frameworks class (Vue, React). Q for anybody: How can we better prepare our students for today's shitshow? 😭
Alex 🍜"I hate it. There are so many things wrong with #React. The cult surrounding it, the company making it, its countless footguns, its bloat, its incompatibility with web platform features—the list goes on."
Ruben Borg Nielsen@mojoaxel literally the worst
jell@elly This all rings sickeningly true. Especially the 'cult' part and it goes all the way up the management hierarchy.
Absolutely no amount of disciplined, researched, even "conservatively optimistic" findings will sway these people from React. If I have to hear the "but [x alternative solution] doesn't scale!" or "you can't hire for THAT!" again, things could get ugly.
Christian Sarnatarohi @elly for some reason your blog renders as dark gray on black (that is, unreadable) on Bromite web browser on Android
@csarnataro I’m not able to test on this browser. Do you know why it would be broken on only that browser?
@elly let me investigate a little bit. chances are that this privacy oriented browser blocks some resources (css probably) coming from external sources? Google or other service providers? let me have a look
@csarnataro hmm I don’t think there is be anything externally hosted?
@elly yep, i saw everything is in a single style.css file. i tried with the chrome remote debugger but no clue, so far. i hope to find some time tomorrow because the thing is intriguing me now (i didn't know you can debug styles on a smartphone using your pc)
@elly ok i think i found something: the text color is defined as a LCH color, which is supported in Chrome starting from version 123. Latest version of Bromite is based on Chromium 108.
@csarnataro huh, there should be fallback colours, I don’t think I disabled that setting?
McNeely@elly I wish I could boost this like a million more times! Great post connecting to a lot of other pieces that really catch the mood of the frontend 🙏
Chris Lienert@elly as I’ve been interviewing a lot lately, barely anyone has blinked an eyelid when I mention my extensive accessibility experience. Maybe I should audit companies’ sites before talking to them
@cliener that’s definitely one way to show them!
Ruby Quail@elly come join this hellishly weird land of being a creative technologist,
Tbh, calling myself a developer just feels gross to me, and the only type of design that still seems to exist that’s relevant to me is “UX Design” which I fundamentally disagree with the conceit for.
@quail “hellishly weird” sounds like my kind of fun 😈