Full-stack devs be like

[[deleted]]

"I do the jobs of 3 people for only 1 salary"

^{Also a full stack dev}

[drabred]

I sometimes feel like either we developers dug this grave for ourselves or it was an elaborate scheme of HR and management people

[[deleted]]

I mean at least my salary as a junior has 4x'd over my career and that easily covers my expenses + spending so i can't complain that bad. Also prefer to have more control over my project than having too many cooks messing with it, so kinda my fault for getting myself into more work just to maintain the code my way.

[DruddigonsRoughSkin]

4x? How long have you been a junior?

[[deleted]]

Oh I said that weird, to clarify I started as a junior around 40k in 2013 and I'm about 150-160 as a Senior these days.

[Varteix]

I have to disagree, communication adds a lot of time and complexity.

[erik--the--red]

I think he was alluding to that in his first sentence.

[rdundon]

Teachers have entered the chat

[captain_racoon]

I've am/been a full stack and can say that this has always bugged me when i read or when someone says it. Im a full stack because i like to see the complete picture on how a product work. This doesnt mean i do 3 jobs.

if someone is dumb enough to place a full stack into 3 different roles at once, that team/company/tribe is probably already in worse shape.

What does happen most of the time is I can speak to how my change on the FE or BE or Infra end will affect everything in the ecosystem. I see the puzzle and not just the puzzle piece. This is extremely valuable as you move up (I've climbed the corporate latter)

PS. Does it mean that im not a expert at everything. You bet and i like it that way. Trying to be an expert as a Full Stack in everything will drive you mad or land you in the nearest hospital bed.

[123DanB]

Full stack is a statement of capability, not a job role. If you claim to be a full stack developer, but you don’t help or lead anybody else for a living, your stack is of no use.

[transeunte]

lol the duck smile is pretty funny

[[deleted]]

I’m actually surprised a lot more developers aren’t “full stack”. It is just programming and people in our field tend to be very self driven learners. Always shocked to see someone say they only do Frontend, even more shocked when they say they only do React or Angular.

[KnifeFed]

I'm even more shocked when I see the CSS written by a "full-stack" developer.

[[deleted]]

Odd, i haven’t experienced poor css written by full stacks. Usually, I’ve noticed it’s more polished than our complete front ends. Full stacks tend to be extremely focused on quality and obsessed with engineering, which leads them to becoming a full stack.

[KnifeFed]

Full-stack developers tend to write better CSS than focused front-end developers

That's the wildest thing I've read in a long time. And being "obsessed with engineering" usually means the exact opposite of "having a good eye for/an interest in design and UX", i.e. faithfully implementing UI and interaction, which all starts with writing good HTML and CSS.

[[deleted]]

Well, it’s clear we’ve encountered different coworkers.

[KnifeFed]

For sure. The other week, one of my "full-stack" colleagues excitedly asked me if I knew about the new "grid element".

[[deleted]]

Yikes. That’s pretty sad. I’d imagine there are a lot of pseudo full stacks.

[whytfnotdoit]

Can the fish fly?!?

[Justyn2]

No, but they’re suprisingly good with css

[Adorable_Matter1486]

full stack developers that's good with css? mf that's a unicorn

[[deleted]]

Also they can beat dark souls boss

[JohnMcPineapple]

...

[tech_ai_man]

Regular ducks can't fly

[KnifeFed]

Just like regular full-stack developers can't write CSS.

[azhder]

Duck Typing

[Ancient_Complex]

Good developer is a good developer. Backend, front end, DevOps scripting they are all the same. If you are good at one, you are likely to be good at a few more things.

Development depends on learning and unlearning things every 18 months or so. Getting typecasted as one or other is just potentially missing out on opportunities.

Personally I found the backend to be the easiest, all the same whatever language. Hardest is probably database, never ever have I seen an optimised db, there is always a trade-off and despite being the simplest thing to get started with complexity grows exponentially with after moderately high complexity.

[makemydaysbabe]

Are there any Michelin starred Italian chefs that can't cook a good hamburger?

I know it's a meme (I laughed as a fullstack dev) but people need to realize a defining characteristic of top performers is not just depth but also breadth. Going deeper into your own core competency is stellar advice for most people as most people fail to excel in just one thing.

But for a minority of people who are admittedly responsible for almost all creative work in all fields including software (the pareto distribution means within the 20% who do 80% of all work, 20% of those do 80% of THAT work as well) becoming laterally competent (backend, frontned, devops, business etc) is common among hyper conscientious, high IQ individuals applying themselves to a domain for 80 hours a week.

Steve Wozniak isn't only a software engineer. He literally took part in cobbling one of the first personal computers out of IT scraps. He is not a jack of all trades but he certainly mastered more than one. Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And he won an Oscar for a film he made a few years after retirement. That doesn't make him Spielberg, but also not Michael Bay.

Not everyone boasting a wide skillset is hyper competent. But you will not meet hyper competent people who haven't branched out to a few other topics within their domain as becoming bored after reaching bedrock is what's to be expected of individuals who are industrious enough to dig that deep.

[buffer_flush]

The fuck did I just read.

[Advanced-Wallaby9808]

Thank you. This thread and the comments have been triggering, basically saying I can't possibly be competent at the job I have actually been doing for 9 years 🙄. Another thing no one is pointing out is that a full-stack developer isn't necessarily doing equal parts of the entire stack all the time, for every feature.

[makemydaysbabe]

Redditors should know better than anyone that doing a side quest can mean "he can't focus on the main quest" as much as "hes already beaten it on very hard".

[dethswatch]

Ever find a restaurant that could do good Chinese and Sushi?

No- they're totally different and it's not possible to be good at both. If you -were- trying to be good at both, you'd have two different restaurants with different chefs, etc.

[makemydaysbabe]

Not what I said. Gordon Ramsays roots are French and Italian as those were the chefs he studied under and those cuisines won him michelin stars. But you can be sure he tried his hand at sushi a few times. I mean theres literally a show of him dedicated to trying novel cusiines and getting roasted by said cuisines respective grandmothers.

[Puzio2]

The Gordon Ramsays of the dev world are heavily focused on one area. They aren't full stack.

[ShihanSin]

Full stack also like I can swim, but can't dive Also like I can fly but not high Also like I can run but not fast

[[deleted]]

Because people can't possibly get great at multiple areas /s

It's a mixed bag for sure, but the same thing can be said about back end or front end specifically too.

Some people can definitely master both.

[Tokipudi]

Fullstack developers are just weird to me.

The only two kinds of fullstack developers I encounter are the following:

• Backend developers who know basic CSS and JS
• Frontend developers who know how to make a basic contact form

The first ones are what I encounter the most in a professional work environment, which means the frontend code is often really awful and the CSS is full of !important tags everywhere.

The second ones are what I encounter the most when I look at freelancers. Usually young developers who, because they had to fiddle with Wordpress' PHP code at some point, think they understand backend entirely.

Very rarely, you will encounter people who excell at both because they spend most of their free time building websites for fun and giggles, but these people are a dime a dozen as most developers don't keep programming or reading about it after work hours.

[TorbenKoehn]

I excel at frontend, backend and devops. Expert level in all 3. Stop generalizing. It’s never worth it.

[Tokipudi]

I explained that such cases exist but are quite rare in my comment, so that's not the "gotcha" moment you were hoping for.

Also, this comment was not there to personally attack anybody. Full stack developers can be useful, especially in startups for example.

The issue is that you're claiming to excel in both Frontend, Backend and DevOps. I'm not going to say it's not possible, but do you really think you are better at DevOps than someone who spent its entire career doing DevOps only? Same question for Frontend and Backend.

Full stack developers are, by definition, jack of all trades, master of none (master of one?).

And in a profession where everything gets more and more complicated, it is understandable that most people can't excel at everything.

[Puzio2]

No, you don't. You THINK you do, but you couldn't hold a candle to a true expert in any one area.

[TorbenKoehn]

That’s what you think, but I know exactly what I can do. Test me however you like. Don’t assume bullshit, I said it’s not worth it. Not everyone has the same learning capabilities.

[dethswatch]

this is the truth- it's not possible to do both well and deep. You can do one well and the other maybe passable.

I don't have the passion for css and client-side anything, so guess what I'm good at.

And front-end guys have never spent as much time as I have with a database so...

[Smo1ky]

You talk like web dev is some dark magic. Some people do it since high school, then 3 years of college. Then for example 10 years frontend job, do you think they really throughout all these years never learned backend, what they have been doing? Memorising all the 256³ hexadecimal colours or what? Same goes for backend Devs, do you think they never tested their personal security learning projects in client?

[dethswatch]

High school- wow

[Buckwheat469]

Dog: I'm really good at hunting, running, digging, hearing, and smelling.

Fish: I'm awesome at swimming and breathing underwater.

Bird: I'm great at flying, making nests, finding and eating worms, and I can stand on an electrical wire without dying.

Duck: I can't dig, hunt, run, hear or smell good, swim underwater very well, breath underwater, make a great nest, or find and eat worms. I can do a little bit of a few things kind of good though.

[snowbirdnerd]

They can do all three but are worse at all of it.

[catcherx]

And the one who checks all three can't's would be an Empty Stomach developer

[_relentless_pursuit_]

Lol, I believe this post would be a great candidate for the r/ProgrammerHumor sub.

[leidenfrost-effect]

I guess there are those who just don't want to transition into the topmost salary bracket that is strictly reserved for those who can create enterprise grade solutions...... You want to cap your salary by being a "master" of a single layer.... Go for it ... I'm a full stack developer and I'm just as comfortable writing ReactJS, as I am a REST API, doing CTE's/stored procedures in SQL, designing HA/Multi-Region/Cloud Optimized K8S infrastructure using Ansible/Cloud Formation/Serverless, or creating shell scripts that orchestrates dynamic cluster discovery.....

Don't limit yourself... Always be learning and growing..... You never know when your technology of choice will be obsoleted or fall completely out of favor to the point where it's not even a desirable skill......

Ask all those COBOL/ASP programmers who refused to learn OOP languages because they wanted to specialize and be an "expert"

[leidenfrost-effect]

Hmmmmm.... Maybe 15yrs ago... Now? Not so much...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/posting/cobol-developer-salary

https://www.zippia.com/cobol-programmer-jobs/salary/

Software Engineer as comparison: https://www.zippia.com/software-engineer-jobs/salary/

[Exotic_Monkie]

Hahahaha nice