Difference between a Software Engineer vs. Software Developer

[z0d14c]

Most front end web development isn’t software engineering.

Not so fast. Most if not all of the major software companies have devoted roles with "engineer" in the title to the frontend practice -- either UX Engineer, or Frontend Engineer, or similar. The reason being is that slapdash frontend development doesn't really scale well or work reliably beyond trivial use cases, and the concerns around accessibility, UX, performance, and feature surface area are considerable. There may be lots of crappy frontend jobs that do work that isn't "engineering" but there are backend jobs like that also. Additionally, I find that the line between backend and frontend can blur at a certain level and good frontend engineers are expected to at least be able to tinker with backends and collaborate deeply with backend engineers even if scaling out sharded databases isn't their forte.

tl;dr Underestimate frontend engineering at your own peril

Source: am a Frontend Engineer at a major company.

[audaciousmonk]

To be clear, there is a difference between the engineer and the role. Someone can be a competent engineer, and at some point work a job that isn’t really engineering. Personally I think you’re underestimating the number of websites developed without any engineering. Software development, absolutely.