My opinion is that all general programmers have the skills necessary to be a "Full-Stack Developer". For me it's just being able to deal with databases and not

My opinion is that all general programmers have the skills necessary to be a "Full-Stack Developer". For me it's just being able to deal with databases and not really minding particularly much what kind of programming systems you are working on. On the contrary, there are people who specialise in specific things. So you might specialise in database issues and want to work primarily on the back end. Or you might specialise in UX, etc and want to specialise in the front end. Some very junior people have only been exposed to programming in very limited situations (for example writing some javascript and knocking up some HTML) and may want to advertise that this is what they are comfortable with for now, so may call themselves a "Frontend developer" Some hiring managers/companies believe that there is a class of programmer who can do "simple" things and take the load off the general programmer. They feel they can hire this class of programmer and save money. My experience is that this doesn't ever work out. It's fine to hire junior people who become full stack developers eventually, but hiring someone who lacks the ability/interest to take it further usually costs more in productivity than they save in salary. I really don't like this idea of trying to hire "Frontend developers" as a kind of "lesser programmer" (as opposed to specialists programmers who just want to concentrate on UX). The TL;DR: "Full Stack" just means "programmer" in my books.