I've done both. I can see where the recruiter is coming from, even if the way they put it is completely disrespectful. I don't think it's a matter of one being

I've done both. I can see where the recruiter is coming from, even if the way they put it is completely disrespectful. I don't think it's a matter of one being more "serious" than the other. Let's say a front-end engineer and a backend engineer spent an equal amount of time studying their craft over 10 years with the same amount of efficiency. Most places will only need what the front-end engineer learned in their first 3 years with whatever updates to the stack are relevant along the way. For the backend engineer, all 10 years of that experience could be put to good use. That's not to say you can't go deep specializing in the front-end, especially if you plan on getting into WebAssembly since that seems to be a thing now, but most places I've come across are just looking for someone to shovel data to the user. A lot of front-end engineers I know tend to only get to the depth of knowledge that most companies would utilize. If someone asked them to build an embeddable Javascript widget like Intercom, they wouldn't even know where to start. For the recruiter, it's probably all just supply and demand. They might not even know what they're talking about, and are just basing it off of some gut feeling they got from an article they read somewhere. If they were having a hard time filling a spot, I'm sure their tune would change.