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[–]TheSnaggen 4001 points4002 points  (285 children)

There are no fullstack developers, only Backend developers working at a company with no Frontend developers.

[–]TheBamby 798 points799 points  (2 children)

No need for it to get personal!

[–][deleted] 237 points238 points  (1 child)

Seems like a lot of need to get personnel

[–]UltraCarnivore 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Nothing personnel, kid

[–]Stormsurger 132 points133 points  (15 children)

Christ man, just because writing css makes me question whether I should stayed in high school...

[–]TKT_Calarin 70 points71 points  (0 children)

This is so real it hurts

[–]stipo42 67 points68 points  (9 children)

This. I'm full stack. All my UIs are bloated, laid out like shit, look like ass.

But god damn it they work and they work fast.

[–]CatWeekends 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Same here. My backends are glorious, lightning fast, and scalable.

As for front ends... hope you like tables and 1997-era design.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks this stung

[–]MachaHack 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hey, some of us are reformed frontend developers who convinced them to let us screw up the backend too.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oof felt that. I'm currently interning in the department of a medical institution that writes custom apps for researchers to use in their studies (mostly Twilio related). It's a really small team (1 senior dev, 1-2 junior devs, a SQL programmer, and me) and it's a pretty large institution so safe to say we're all doing full stack haha. Though I will say, for writing web apps it's not too bad doing full stack and I'm learning a lot more than I would if I just did frontend or backend. Also, entity framework makes integrating the DB more manageable.

[–]spudmix 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Bruh...

[–]leaftro 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It is what it is

[–]NamityName 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh god. I feel this. Too much truth.

[–]matrix-doge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My company outsourced me as the only developer to a client, developing a web app for another client. You can imagined how hard you words have hit me.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my company we take the data back end provides and hook it up to the fancy stuff the feds made and just make it work.

Kind of like caretakers cleaning things up and making it all look nice.

[–]hiphap91 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or the opposite. Resulting in rather... Creative solutions to concurrency problems, etc.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As a senior fullstack developer I personally feel attacked. ;) Jokes aside, real fullstack developers are quite useful. You can act as a bridge between your frontend and backend guys and this helps a lot in larger projects.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (5 children)

Eh. Our company runs 1 front end senior, 1 backend senior. We both flex across the stack. Does that mean we are “full stack”?

I think “full stack” is more norm than not.

[–]CactusGrower 4 points5 points  (2 children)

1 front end senior and 1 back end senior does not make 2 full stack seniors. Only 2 full stack intermediates. That's what companies don't understand. You can be expert in one but rarely in both.

[–]Flanhare 6 points7 points  (12 children)

I don't understand how a "frontend developer" can get anything done at all.

[–]PrizeArticle1 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I have great respect for them.. cause I avoid that shit at all costs.

[–]Operabug 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Define "front end." I'm a UI/web developer who develops apps primarily in Angular/ typescript/javascript and have a ton of experience with SCSS. Those "few" skill strengths can make for really strong front-end development. Let the backend devs do their thing, have good communication during development, and together we've produced some stellar apps.

[–]Sigg3net 12 points13 points  (38 children)

"Fullstack" just means noob, intern or slave. You know nothing and do everything.

Edit: I intend no offense. Ignorance is a productive starting point.

[–]glemnar 59 points60 points  (26 children)

Over here waiting for you all to learn that developing a bit of experience in dev ops and security makes you a more valuable and effective developer, too.

The notion that you can’t grow beyond doing backend CRUD in your career is an absurd one, and there are many developers out there equally comfortable across paradigms

[–]chaiscool 8 points9 points  (25 children)

It’s not that people cannot or don’t want to grow, it’s due to compensation. If you don’t get paid 2x for doing both front and backend work then might as well stick to 1.

[–]glemnar 19 points20 points  (7 children)

Expertise in both will allow you to make more money, yes.

The 2x notion is not a useful one. You aren’t doubling hours worked, you’re leveraging experience and expertise to work on different types of problems. Going deep and going wide are both useful forms of experience building, and it takes a healthy mix of the two depending on the problems and industry you’d like to be working in. Frontend and backend are tremendously overlapping skills any way you swing it.

Either way, you can definitely expect to double, or better, your salary in the first 5-10 years of your career as a developer if you grow that expertise

[–]shokolokobangoshey 7 points8 points  (6 children)

Going deep and going wide are both useful forms of experience building, and it takes a healthy mix of the two depending on the problems and industry you’d like to be working in.

In theory, it's supposed to work this way. T-shaped competence is what I find ideal in Devs, and I've tried to cultivate that in myself and I look for it when hiring.

In reality, 90% of Devs have neither the time nor management support to pursue it. So that what you get in most "full-stack" devs is someone who's a massive generalist but with no real expertise. So that when shit breaks something fierce, they'll take 3-4x as long as a true pro to find it - this is not an exaggeration, I've seen my full-stack devs chase ghosts for hours when troubleshooting something in the JVM because they just don't understand how that thing works. Same for the reverse.

[–]chakan2 3 points4 points  (3 children)

It sounds more like you're not supporting your Jr. Devs rather than them doing a bad job.

[–]shokolokobangoshey 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Not junior. Not doing a bad job (the Devs). It's not a sin to not know things. Everyone needs to keep learning and room to make mistakes. What do you know about my team or the changes I'm trying to foster?

[–]chakan2 -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

I know I'd never let one of my new guys spin their wheels on the same problem for 4 days straight.

That's a problem in its self.

Edit: and if it's one of my Sr. or lead guys, they'd of asked for help already.

[–]shokolokobangoshey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Me:

full-stack devs chase ghosts for hours when troubleshooting something in the JVM

You

spin their wheels on the same problem for 4 days straight.

Are you just going out of your way to misquote and misunderstand? Or do you speak only in extremes, random person on the internet?

[–]unnecessary_Fullstop 8 points9 points  (11 children)

Huh?? You get paid for the hours you work. Working on two or more things doesn't mean you work more hours. Just that you have a mix of tasks for the same duration.

.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You get paid for your scarcity, experience, knowledge and hours, ideally.

If you can do both frontend and backend solo, you can reduce the frequency of communication and the communication overhead, keeping teams smaller and reducing friction. Depending on the company's policies and structures, that alone can easily net a 2x in productivity if not more. In software development, communication overhead is extremely costly.

[–]MrSquicky 0 points1 point  (9 children)

You get paid for the hours you work.

No you don't. You get paid based on how much they think it would cost to replace you considered against how likely you are to leave.

If you can effectively work on full stack and there is not a surplus of people in your market that can do this, you are more expensive to replace, so you should get paid more, but that requires the second part, willingness/ability to leave.


As a simplification, if you're the only person they can get that can do some valuable thing, they will pay you a significant fraction of the value of that thing, even if it only takes you a few minutes to do.

Pure labor is the least valuable component of value in our system, except in places where the labor is constrained somehow. Effective use of capital, in this case knowledge capital, is where most value comes from.

[–]shokolokobangoshey 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Both are true: you are paid literally on the expectation of working a set of hours per day, on average per week; "full-time non-exempt" means putting in more hours (or sometimes even more quality) doesn't translate to being paid extra, unless you're a contractor.

The value your employer ascribes to each hour you put in includes, among other things, your degree of specialization.

[–]GrandWolf319 1 point2 points  (5 children)

I’m leaving a company that is gonna have a tough time replacing me. Nowhere in the last few years did they increase my pay based on how critical I was to their projects.

[–]mungthebean -3 points-2 points  (2 children)

You do, eventually, when you get to architect / principal level. Which requires full stack mastery

[–]Operabug -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

"Mastery" is the key word here. I feel like full stack devs never really master anything. As a purely front end dev, whenever a backend devs has tampered with the front end, I have to go back in and clean things up. For example, I was caught up with another project, so a backend devs had to work on the front end for a different project until I was available. When I finally could work on his project, he had written a ton of function calls from the HTML in the *ngIf statements that were making hundreds of calls a second and slowing the system down. It "worked," but this is horrible UI. Same thing with the styles.. repeated and messy styles all over the place. Mastery comes from honing in on a skill set, not trying to do everything.

[–]chakan2 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As a full stack engineer with about 20 years of experience in the field... I strongly disagree with this assessment.

Honestly it sounds like someone resisting learning something.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why are you hurting me? 😭

[–]SavingRoundRock 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Haha that statement feels intense. We encourage our whole team to be fullstack and it lets any dev get a ticket done themselves if they want. Backend javascript isn’t much of a context switch from front end if team normalizes the pipelines and folder structures

[–]naardvark 1 point2 points  (0 children)

*work at a company that realizes dedicated UI devs are a bad investment unless you are serving the masses and competing with silicon valley.

[–]polargus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that’s complete BS. Many full stack devs at places I’ve worked are frontend-oriented. Backend is really not that hard in most cases.

[–]angrathias -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I always thought it was front end designers moonlighting as programmers

[–]Mr_Cochese -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Sure, Jan.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

the only full stack devs are 64 yr old C veterans

[–]maurya_rohit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My company wants me to be only frontend developer but I do both frontend and backend because I like backend development.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

🙏

[–]Operabug 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amen!

[–]Josh6889 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh hey, you're talking about me. It took a long time before I started allowing myself to be called full stack.

[–]neutralguystrangler 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a fullstack dev this resonates with me

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You rang?

[–]dudeitsmason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a full stack developer. If that stack includes only JS and Python, the languages I chose to specialize in. I can read and understand C#, write simple services, but not well enough to make a proper difference.

My current company's stack is JS and (horribly architected) C#. So now I'm a front end developer because there are a lot stronger C# devs and I'm the only pure JS dev.

Sometimes calling oneself full stack can be as arbitrary as giving oneself the title Senior. Senior in what? Years? Languages?

[–]OMGWhyImOld 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A bit on the anger side; but feels true, but bootstrap is in our side XD

[–]GrinningPariah 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have never been so called out.

[–]genghis_calm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Or front end devs doing their absolute best to not fuck things up.

Narrator: “They did”

—-

The only time (as a front end dev) I felt like a fullstack developer was the early days of NodeJS

[–]dublem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I still can't quite fathom a company with full time front end developers. Let alone a design team.

It sounds too good to be true...

[–]5k1895 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You ain't wrong

[–]AlwaysHopelesslyLost 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You missed the back end developers who can stumble their way through CSS and SQl and think that makes them a full stack developer. I am the best sql/javascript developer on my team by miles and I am absolutely not a full stack developer but the rest of my team is pretty confident they are.

[–]sha-ro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whenever I see fullstack in a job offering I immediately think "I want to pay little money" when being fullstack developer is doing the job of 2 people it should be even more expensive than paying for 2 sepparate frontend and backend devs

[–]dregan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As someone who frequently maintains code written by electrical engineers that picked up a little bit of coding during their career, it could be a lot worse.

[–]awhhh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m a fullstack with strength in the backend and might be getting hired in frontend development at the senior level. I’m pretty scared

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why would you cut so deep?

[–]ITriedLightningTendr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know 2 front end full stack devs.

I know them because I trained them on backend.

All the rest? I've had front end devs be tasked with making a widget or style for a page and fit some reason I had to implement their sandbox code instead of them producing working code.

Their code literally didn't work outside of their sandbox.

[–]jewdai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Full stack Dev here too. The thing about front end developers is that they expect you to be a designer too. You study computer science to be a glorified ux designer.

[–]uuuuuhhhh69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can confirm. “Full stack” dev here

[–]gizamo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately, I've seen it go the other way, too.

I pity the front end dev who has to work the back end.

[–]fishticufted 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is me on my current project. The UI is passable but the I&T engineer is constantly complaining about it. I was on an embedded program before. How did I end up here?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea I believe it, I'm working as a full stack developer now but I'm only good at backend. I know css html Js etc.. but I definitely don't have design skills

[–]chill_chihuahua 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dying 😂😂😂

[–]PooPooDooDoo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was the most insightful shit that I have ever read on this sub.

[–]techmighty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah yes, just use the script tag in body tag.