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"Stupid fish, can't climb a tree" Far from dead-end, I think front end is a much more dynamic field that offers much more career options. You are essentially t

"Stupid fish, can't climb a tree" Far from dead-end, I think front end is a much more dynamic field that offers much more career options. You are essentially translating extraordinarily complicated engineering solutions and translating them into human design. This makes you valuable in many, many more fields because the skills you need are of broader use. Front end people rise the ranks all of the time, but usually not through engineering departments. Because it's such a human-oriented skill, your career ceiling is determined by your interpersonal skills. I know lots of frontend engineers who have risen to prominence through Consulting, UX, Marketing, etc. I think your current benchmark is wrong - you probably shouldn't care about being the king of the greybeards.

honestdeveloper 3y ago
I'd love to hear more about the frontend people who excelled in consulting, as being independent / my own boss would be my ideal path. I've done my share of contracting, but unfortunately as I've gotten more experience, I haven't found it any easier to find work (could be the market), and wages haven't gone up at all. It seems like no one wants to pay above $100/hr for frontend contract work and I was making that almost 5 years ago. Prob hurts a lot that I've been remote for the last 5 years, and thus haven't built much of a network.
- legitster 3y ago
  So, front end is insanely valuable for user-centric services. Just think of the number of successful services/applications that are no more than very refined UIs on top of boring backend technology. If you want to get 1M active users, a whiz-bang front-end on top of a PHP server is more likely to get you there than the inverse. In an agency setting, oftentimes you have no choice in the backend tech you have to work with. You usually sit with clients and work with then on how to design and implement the best possible experience with what they have. But your value is not in how marketable your particular technical depth is - good decision making and bedside manner with clients are what you make money off of. So the easy path is: work within an agency -> develop a body of client work -> leverage your body of work and connections to start your own (smaller) agency. Or, even start in a corporate job where they prioritize frontend work. But as some general career advice, if you treat your own skillset as a commodity, markets will happily treat it as one.

honestdeveloper 3y ago

I'd love to hear more about the frontend people who excelled in consulting, as being independent / my own boss would be my ideal path. I've done my share of contracting, but unfortunately as I've gotten more experience, I haven't found it any easier to find work (could be the market), and wages haven't gone up at all. It seems like no one wants to pay above $100/hr for frontend contract work and I was making that almost 5 years ago. Prob hurts a lot that I've been remote for the last 5 years, and thus haven't built much of a network.

legitster 3y ago
So, front end is insanely valuable for user-centric services. Just think of the number of successful services/applications that are no more than very refined UIs on top of boring backend technology. If you want to get 1M active users, a whiz-bang front-end on top of a PHP server is more likely to get you there than the inverse. In an agency setting, oftentimes you have no choice in the backend tech you have to work with. You usually sit with clients and work with then on how to design and implement the best possible experience with what they have. But your value is not in how marketable your particular technical depth is - good decision making and bedside manner with clients are what you make money off of. So the easy path is: work within an agency -> develop a body of client work -> leverage your body of work and connections to start your own (smaller) agency. Or, even start in a corporate job where they prioritize frontend work. But as some general career advice, if you treat your own skillset as a commodity, markets will happily treat it as one.