The point being missed is this: Does the flexibility of your salary options translate to a better product, or does a better product translate to the flexibilit

The point being missed is this: Does the flexibility of your salary options translate to a better product, or does a better product translate to the flexibility of your salary options? If your answer is the latter, then it makes much more sense to hire front-end and back-end developers to focus on their respective niches; front-end devs focus on making the product usable and keeping users engaged. Back-end devs focus on making sure the product functions, builds features that evolve out of user interaction and keeps those features running. When you try to combine these niches and ask a guy to play both front-end and back in his priorities become conflicting and your product becomes one of those sites that was either "Built by a designer" or "Designed by a developer". Don't hire an architect to do an engineer's job, is what I'm saying. They play similar roles, but they have very different focuses that can directly impact the final product. Exceptions exist.