Front end development is a craft, just like other crafts. People need to treat it seriously if they expect to be taken seriously and be paid accordingly. (BTW,

Front end development is a craft, just like other crafts. People need to treat it seriously if they expect to be taken seriously and be paid accordingly. (BTW, if you still haven't met a FE dev who's ever read a book on CSS, you have now. I own quite a few AND have read them.) I also think a lot of the value from a front end developer comes from their ability to merge the technical requirements with a designer's vision, and produce a product that is at the same time usable, accessible and (bare minimum) meets the technical requirements. Not going to touch the CSS Grid except for two quick comments: - they absolutely should have been keeping up with CSS Grid, where it was at, and when it was usable and when it isn't - it is still an open question, because although the overall numbers should 90+% available in browsers, you have to check your own stats. For example, the stuff I work on is often used in Enterprise environments, so IE11 is a requirement (yes, we know our numbers, it is, it could literally cost us 6 figure sales if we don't have support for it). We are using CSS Grid, but we have to be very careful what we use it for and to test those uses in IE to make sure the old Grid spec in IE supports the things we do it with. Otherwise it's back to Flex or other layout techniques. It's not a silver bullet, but I also recognize that is becoming a more unique example these days. Those are the kinds of things a good FE dev should know though, IMO, and be able to articulate. Plus, FE devs also need to know HTML and semantics, accessibility, and of course, Javascript. When you can put that all together along with the skills earlier re: usability and accessibility, then you can justify the higher salary brackets.