5 ms·

I'm a frontender. My speciality is client-side JavaScript. I'm not horrible at it. I freaking love my job and would do it for funsies of there weren't companie

by ry_ry 8y ago

I'm a frontender. My speciality is client-side JavaScript. I'm not horrible at it. I freaking love my job and would do it for funsies of there weren't companies prepared to pay me to do it, but my job has been completed bullshit for as long as the role has existed. When the revolution comes I'll be the first against the wall against the wall alongside the digital marketing managers and the agile coaches.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
ops and security will shoot the back end devs first if it makes you feel any better.
- paganel 8y ago
  As a back-end dev I have the exact same instinct about what our ops guy would do to people like me. He’s a great guy, though.
ironjunkie 8y ago
don't you think you help people navigating websites by making them more user-friendly ? I would believe that what you do doesn't really fulfill the definition of bullshit job as it helps people down the line.
- alexbecker 8y ago
  Most of front-end work isn't making stuff more "user-friendly". It's an arms race of "fancy", showing off that your company is technically up-to-date and has money to burn.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  Yes, for maybe the first 2 years. Then a maxima is reached, but UI designers gotta justify their paycheck, so they keep innovating right off that peak into the next valley
  - linkregister 8y ago
    Aren't they usually designing the UI for new features of the software? Backend developers can't just ship an API in a B2C environment.
    - meheleventyone 8y ago
      Plenty of new features are bullshit as well. Added without much reason and used by few customers. There’s often a lot of pressure on product teams to continuously make things better and no incentive for them to say “the best thing we could do is to leave this alone for now”. This gets internalised to the point everyone has their own little hobby horse and actively lobbies to get it on the agenda. Hey presto you have a “dynamic and creative” team constantly churning the periphery of the product core.
      - otakucode 8y ago
        For many years now I have wondered if it might be practical for software engineers to be kept "on retainer", as lawyers often are, by companies. I once purchased an absolutely fantastic FTP client called BulletProof FTP. But it followed the sad trajectory of so much software. It reached very near to absolute perfection. And then they just kept working on it. It grew like a cancer. It destroyed everything good about the software and eventually made it worthless. It was clear, to me at least, that there was simply some manager somewhere who had personal problems and couldn't tolerate sitting still, forcing developers to just keep bolting garbage to the side of the thing. A lot of it boils down to the Protestant Work Ethic having no place in the modern world. It made sense for situations where 'work' was physical labor. That benefits from perseverance and endurance. Mental work does not benefit from perseverance and endurance. It suffers tremendously from them. The brain simply does not work that way.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Making a good UI for new backend features is not enough to justify full-time frontend work. You have to add glitter and cruft, and make the whole thing less usable. (One of the things that pisses me off in modern UI design on the frontend is designing resource-intensive pretty UIs. They look great on mockups. They work well on testing. Throw some actual, real-life data at them, and they slow your browser to a crawl. This directly limits the usefulness of a product.)
- bluntfang 8y ago
  sweet summer child...
contravariant 8y ago
Are you saying you enjoy doing something you believe to be utterly pointless, or do you enjoy doing some part of the work that serves a purpose except that it's being used for a completely pointless goal?
- ry_ry 8y ago
  Separate things - I love the creative process of solving problems by writing code, I absolutely love contributing to something I think is worthwhile. I'm lucky enough that I can say i wouldn't work for a company that I didn't believe in. The fact that I used framework x over framework y? Pretty irrelevant on the grander scale.
komali2 8y ago
Huh, I lump us in the other camp - the producers / creators. That's the whole reason I went through the trouble to become a web developer. I had a bullshit job before - contract recruiter. No creation. Only added value because engineering managers can't be fucked to figure out how LinkedIn works. Maybe your product sucks in your eyes? What about the frontend for couch surfing? Helps people connect with locals when they travel. Or OkCupid? People have been married through it.
- ry_ry 8y ago
  I was being flippant, a huge part of my 'thing' is job satisfaction and making something really good is the majority of that. However as far as modern frontend work goes? somebody with a grasp of XML could build a perfectly functional frontend. Everything else is tinsel and glitter.
  - jen729w 8y ago
    You do yourself a disservice, sir/ma'am. We used to use Fraedom for our expense software. Everybody hated it. Now we use Concur. Everybody loves it. Same functionality. Radically different outcome. It affects people! My boss' quality of life improved measurably.
    - esrauch 8y ago
      Funny, I hate Concur. I can easily imagine how it could be worse though.
dev_north_east 8y ago
> I'll be the first against the wall against the wall alongside the digital marketing managers and the agile coaches. Full-time SCRUM-masters won't last the first 30 minutes of the revolution.

by ry_ry 8y ago

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

ops and security will shoot the back end devs first if it makes you feel any better.

paganel 8y ago
As a back-end dev I have the exact same instinct about what our ops guy would do to people like me. He’s a great guy, though.

ironjunkie 8y ago

don't you think you help people navigating websites by making them more user-friendly ? I would believe that what you do doesn't really fulfill the definition of bullshit job as it helps people down the line.

alexbecker 8y ago
Most of front-end work isn't making stuff more "user-friendly". It's an arms race of "fancy", showing off that your company is technically up-to-date and has money to burn.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
Yes, for maybe the first 2 years. Then a maxima is reached, but UI designers gotta justify their paycheck, so they keep innovating right off that peak into the next valley
- linkregister 8y ago
  Aren't they usually designing the UI for new features of the software? Backend developers can't just ship an API in a B2C environment.
  - meheleventyone 8y ago
    Plenty of new features are bullshit as well. Added without much reason and used by few customers. There’s often a lot of pressure on product teams to continuously make things better and no incentive for them to say “the best thing we could do is to leave this alone for now”. This gets internalised to the point everyone has their own little hobby horse and actively lobbies to get it on the agenda. Hey presto you have a “dynamic and creative” team constantly churning the periphery of the product core.
    - otakucode 8y ago
      For many years now I have wondered if it might be practical for software engineers to be kept "on retainer", as lawyers often are, by companies. I once purchased an absolutely fantastic FTP client called BulletProof FTP. But it followed the sad trajectory of so much software. It reached very near to absolute perfection. And then they just kept working on it. It grew like a cancer. It destroyed everything good about the software and eventually made it worthless. It was clear, to me at least, that there was simply some manager somewhere who had personal problems and couldn't tolerate sitting still, forcing developers to just keep bolting garbage to the side of the thing. A lot of it boils down to the Protestant Work Ethic having no place in the modern world. It made sense for situations where 'work' was physical labor. That benefits from perseverance and endurance. Mental work does not benefit from perseverance and endurance. It suffers tremendously from them. The brain simply does not work that way.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Making a good UI for new backend features is not enough to justify full-time frontend work. You have to add glitter and cruft, and make the whole thing less usable. (One of the things that pisses me off in modern UI design on the frontend is designing resource-intensive pretty UIs. They look great on mockups. They work well on testing. Throw some actual, real-life data at them, and they slow your browser to a crawl. This directly limits the usefulness of a product.)
bluntfang 8y ago
sweet summer child...

contravariant 8y ago

Are you saying you enjoy doing something you believe to be utterly pointless, or do you enjoy doing some part of the work that serves a purpose except that it's being used for a completely pointless goal?

ry_ry 8y ago
Separate things - I love the creative process of solving problems by writing code, I absolutely love contributing to something I think is worthwhile. I'm lucky enough that I can say i wouldn't work for a company that I didn't believe in. The fact that I used framework x over framework y? Pretty irrelevant on the grander scale.

komali2 8y ago

Huh, I lump us in the other camp - the producers / creators. That's the whole reason I went through the trouble to become a web developer. I had a bullshit job before - contract recruiter. No creation. Only added value because engineering managers can't be fucked to figure out how LinkedIn works. Maybe your product sucks in your eyes? What about the frontend for couch surfing? Helps people connect with locals when they travel. Or OkCupid? People have been married through it.

ry_ry 8y ago
I was being flippant, a huge part of my 'thing' is job satisfaction and making something really good is the majority of that. However as far as modern frontend work goes? somebody with a grasp of XML could build a perfectly functional frontend. Everything else is tinsel and glitter.
- jen729w 8y ago
  You do yourself a disservice, sir/ma'am. We used to use Fraedom for our expense software. Everybody hated it. Now we use Concur. Everybody loves it. Same functionality. Radically different outcome. It affects people! My boss' quality of life improved measurably.
  - esrauch 8y ago
    Funny, I hate Concur. I can easily imagine how it could be worse though.

dev_north_east 8y ago

> I'll be the first against the wall against the wall alongside the digital marketing managers and the agile coaches. Full-time SCRUM-masters won't last the first 30 minutes of the revolution.