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Discussion on: Calling all Full-Stack Haters

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psihius profile image
Arvids Godjuks

10 years ago the knowledge you needed to do both backend and frontend (PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS) was so much smaller. These days just doing markup of HTML & CSS is a huge field. I work with people who do that specific job in 1/10th of the time it would take me and they know things about browsers and their issues that I never did or will because you have to be really working that field full time.
A front-end JS framework these days is a big thing, to any proper marketable and applicable to the job tool you need a year or two to really become good at it. The issue is - I do not have that much time to do that if I also work backend, dealing with server scaling issues and trying to keep up with the business needs. Also, I can do 2 to 5 times more efficient job on the backend than the frontend anyway and the company literally will lose money if they put me to work on the frontend. I'm fairly capable to adapt in a month, but it will take me multiple years to really properly learn the tools and get up to speed with someone who does frontend full time.

My issue with full-stack terminology is when this is applied to Senior (and I mean proper Senior positions with experience of 7-10+ years under the belt) where it is clear you need a specialist in the field. But for some reason, they still look for full-stack so you get ignored by the HR just on the fact you are a backend developer.

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dexygen profile image
George Jempty

The knowledge may have been so much smaller, but the tooling was far worse (Venkman for Javascript debugging, ugh), or even non-existent (no console)