I'm in the same boat as OP, although a little older. I started my HTML journey around 2000 and have been working as a "front-end" since graduating in 2007. I t

I'm in the same boat as OP, although a little older. I started my HTML journey around 2000 and have been working as a "front-end" since graduating in 2007. I think the complexity in front end has been driven primarily by two things: 1. business demands pushing a lot of innovation in FE. Ultimately this is a good thing but it means more complexity, nowadays i mostly write non-JS JS, that is code that needs to be compiled into "real" JS. So the scope of complexity of non JS is almost unlimited and now webassembly :) - wont be long until i'm asked to edit Rust files that compile into jS haha 2. Node JS pushing us FE guys onto the server side and CLI side of things. Suddenly we are expecting to be masters of UI dev with sense of design and UX and also coding for the server and now also writing tests!!!. - I have exactly zero interest in writing tests. --- Unfortunately 95% of jobs now at least "expect" you to be comfortable in all these areas. Ultimately we are to blame as we are the ones who are pushing the boundaries of innovation, creating new tools and libraries to make our jobs easier/more complex(?) which feeds into creating more and more unrealistic expectations from us. I am at the point now reaching my 40s looking for some other field to move into....As I don't think i can do this work much longer unless there is a trend of specialistation that will emerge soon. Edit: Also one other thing to note, a lot of the new guys entering this field in the last 5-10 years are VERY dogmatic and don't really share the principle of if it works it works. They tend to be very much opinionated on having to do things in a certain way. This is why you get a lot of people who have trouble thinking outside of a "React" box (or whatever) and don't seem to understand most of these libs are progressive and there is nothing wrong with combining different approaches to meet your needs. It's like jQuery or imperative JS is a dirty word nowadays. Or that theres nothing wrong with building a static html file with a little js and css without the need for npm packages or some generator/build process.