5 ms·

The post does come off as a touch arrogant, but I believe the core issue was that the role was misadvertised: > I was hired as a frontend developer, which turn

The post does come off as a touch arrogant, but I believe the core issue was that the role was misadvertised: > I was hired as a frontend developer, which turned out to be misleading. [...] In order to triage this, I worked on a number of frontend projects in my spare time at a pace that was admittedly draining. The author thought they were going to be doing frontend, but a significant portion of their work was not. So they quit. That seems extremely reasonable.

dmitriid 5y ago
He was still doing frontend. He didn't think of it that way because modern view perverted the meaning beyond all recognition
- pc86 5y ago
  Exactly. FTA: > Most of the "frontend work" I saw was via Rails ERB templates [puke emoji]. Okay, so ridiculous stack/language bias aside, he's doing frontend, but it's not the frontend he wants. He wants to be writing JavaScript. Which is fine, but he's implying Shopify messed up when it seems he just didn't have a clear understanding of what the role entailed and what the tech was he'd be working with.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > he's implying Shopify messed up when it seems he just didn't have a clear understanding of what the role entailed and what the tech was he'd be working with. It seems extremely improbable to me that at no point in the hiring process, starting from the job advertisement on down, was this ever stated.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      This can happen (speaking from personal experience). For a big/growing company you're interviewing for a position that's open in several teams which all can have different stacks. Which team you end up with depends on some internal priority.
  - worker767424 5y ago
    The puke emoji was especially unwarranted. Templating engines are templating engines.
    - pc86 5y ago
      Oh but you don't understand. This wasn't released within the last 30 days, therefore it's legacy and bad. I don't know why but honestly I'd expect something a little more reasonable from someone coming from academia, but in the broader context of the piece as a whole it makes perfect sense.
- worker767424 5y ago
  He wanted to write a SPA. Instead he was writing Rails. This is the quote that is especially telling: > I asked myself the question, "Am I becoming a better frontend developer through this experience?" and the answer was of course no. He didn't think he was getting better by learning different approaches to solving the same problem? He doesn't think that more server-side code would make him understand the context of frontend development better? Funny enough, I'd buy "I don't enjoy the work" or "Rails is outdated" (this is debatable) over his complaints.
darylfritz 5y ago
I don't know the job posting that the author had read, or what guided their expectations, but here is a current Shopify Senior Frontend Engineer job posting: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wxk6Q4tNoNgJ:https://www.shopify.ca/careers/senior-frontend-software-engineer-remote-americas_ce1e5b1e-cc60-498e-a175-f2aba5cc4afe+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-b-d https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wxk6Q4... This job posting sounds like it lines up with author's experience at the company, and knowing Shopify is a Rails-heavy company, I would safely assume most Shopify postings look similar to this. I don't think author was bait-and-switched, author just didn't get what they _wanted_. Note: providing a google cache link since I don't know when the posting will expire
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  > You’ll use the latest web standards in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and modern technologies and frameworks like Typescript, React, GraphQL, Apollo and Ruby on Rails, to develop large front-end web applications and websites that scale and perform well on all devices. If I read this, I'd think that I'm going to be doing "modern front-end", which is usually a React SPA connected to a back-end API via REST or GraphQL. The inclusion of GraphQL and Apollo on this list does mean that I'd be surprised if my work was primarily server rendered ERB templates. I think there's a bit of a bias here because many people on HN don't like modern front-end. Yes, yes, ERB templates are just fine. But they're not the same as a modern JS stack and if you're looking to gain expertise in a JS stack, they're clearly not helpful.

dmitriid 5y ago

He was still doing frontend. He didn't think of it that way because modern view perverted the meaning beyond all recognition

pc86 5y ago
Exactly. FTA: > Most of the "frontend work" I saw was via Rails ERB templates [puke emoji]. Okay, so ridiculous stack/language bias aside, he's doing frontend, but it's not the frontend he wants. He wants to be writing JavaScript. Which is fine, but he's implying Shopify messed up when it seems he just didn't have a clear understanding of what the role entailed and what the tech was he'd be working with.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > he's implying Shopify messed up when it seems he just didn't have a clear understanding of what the role entailed and what the tech was he'd be working with. It seems extremely improbable to me that at no point in the hiring process, starting from the job advertisement on down, was this ever stated.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    This can happen (speaking from personal experience). For a big/growing company you're interviewing for a position that's open in several teams which all can have different stacks. Which team you end up with depends on some internal priority.
- worker767424 5y ago
  The puke emoji was especially unwarranted. Templating engines are templating engines.
  - pc86 5y ago
    Oh but you don't understand. This wasn't released within the last 30 days, therefore it's legacy and bad. I don't know why but honestly I'd expect something a little more reasonable from someone coming from academia, but in the broader context of the piece as a whole it makes perfect sense.
worker767424 5y ago
He wanted to write a SPA. Instead he was writing Rails. This is the quote that is especially telling: > I asked myself the question, "Am I becoming a better frontend developer through this experience?" and the answer was of course no. He didn't think he was getting better by learning different approaches to solving the same problem? He doesn't think that more server-side code would make him understand the context of frontend development better? Funny enough, I'd buy "I don't enjoy the work" or "Rails is outdated" (this is debatable) over his complaints.

darylfritz 5y ago

I don't know the job posting that the author had read, or what guided their expectations, but here is a current Shopify Senior Frontend Engineer job posting: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wxk6Q4tNoNgJ:https://www.shopify.ca/careers/senior-frontend-software-engineer-remote-americas_ce1e5b1e-cc60-498e-a175-f2aba5cc4afe+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-b-d https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wxk6Q4... This job posting sounds like it lines up with author's experience at the company, and knowing Shopify is a Rails-heavy company, I would safely assume most Shopify postings look similar to this. I don't think author was bait-and-switched, author just didn't get what they _wanted_. Note: providing a google cache link since I don't know when the posting will expire

hardwaregeek 5y ago
> You’ll use the latest web standards in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and modern technologies and frameworks like Typescript, React, GraphQL, Apollo and Ruby on Rails, to develop large front-end web applications and websites that scale and perform well on all devices. If I read this, I'd think that I'm going to be doing "modern front-end", which is usually a React SPA connected to a back-end API via REST or GraphQL. The inclusion of GraphQL and Apollo on this list does mean that I'd be surprised if my work was primarily server rendered ERB templates. I think there's a bit of a bias here because many people on HN don't like modern front-end. Yes, yes, ERB templates are just fine. But they're not the same as a modern JS stack and if you're looking to gain expertise in a JS stack, they're clearly not helpful.