Having done 25 years of "full stack" now I'd go for the back end or even skip it and hit operations/SRE. The rate of churn is far far lower, the knowledge is valuable for longer and the money is better.
But the hours are horrible, right?
Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
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Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#12Question: at what point does "specializing" in one or the other make you not a "full stack" developer anymore? I can technically do about everything on the web, I'm just really bad at front-end, and really good at back-end, which is where I do most of my work. Am I "full stack"? How good to you have to be in...well, everything, to call yourself "full stack"?
This is a good question. as far as front/back end I think it's probably just good enough to mostly get it working right without breaking anything too often.
But what I think really makes it front end is also when you have some server/platform administration skills. You would be surprised how many web developers don't know about tab complete on the shell, or have no idea how DNS works.
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#13Question: at what point does "specializing" in one or the other make you not a "full stack" developer anymore? I can technically do about everything on the web, I'm just really bad at front-end, and really good at back-end, which is where I do most of my work. Am I "full stack"? How good to you have to be in...well, everything, to call yourself "full stack"?
To me, full stack means you're not "really bad" at FE but more like intermediate to advanced at FE and BE. Over the past few years, full stack is becoming more involved with devops, data engineering, and machine learning too so there's now different levels of full stack in my opinion.
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#14Having done 25 years of "full stack" now I'd go for the back end or even skip it and hit operations/SRE. The rate of churn is far far lower, the knowledge is valuable for longer and the money is better.
But the hours are horrible, right?
I'm sure it is for some people but it's the least amount of hours I've ever done for the most money which is what I have optimised my career for.
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#15Having done 25 years of "full stack" now I'd go for the back end or even skip it and hit operations/SRE. The rate of churn is far far lower, the knowledge is valuable for longer and the money is better.
What would the curriculum for operations be?
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#16Having done 25 years of "full stack" now I'd go for the back end or even skip it and hit operations/SRE. The rate of churn is far far lower, the knowledge is valuable for longer and the money is better.
What would the curriculum for operations be?
Well basically AWS at the moment. The art is to know which bandwagon to jump on next.
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#17Having done 25 years of "full stack" now I'd go for the back end or even skip it and hit operations/SRE. The rate of churn is far far lower, the knowledge is valuable for longer and the money is better.
But the hours are horrible, right?
Unanticipated issues should be the exception, not the norm. If unanticipated issues (both during and outside of working hours) occur at any regular interval; that is a problem that must be fixed ASAP.
When unanticipated issues continue to occur; it indicates either a management problem, a technical competence problem, or both.
IMO: One of the advantages of "devops" is that the people who get interrupted off hours are the same people who have to fix the problem. It's not always sustainable, though.
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#18Heard a VC in a podcast mention backend is going extinct with api SaaS so I'd do front end
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#19in the macro: look at how many people in positions you'd like to be in (CTO, VP Eng, etc) have backend vs frontend backgrounds. there's a statistical "frontend ceiling" (https://twitter.com/changelog/status/1466420085908807681) in career progression.
in the micro: statistics dont matter if YOU know what you enjoy + are good at + pays well. theres ways to do well and make money in whatever background. you can even do this by rotating ends every 2 years until you find a natural stopping point
Re: Ask HN: Should I be specializing in either front end or back end as full-stack?
#20Question: at what point does "specializing" in one or the other make you not a "full stack" developer anymore? I can technically do about everything on the web, I'm just really bad at front-end, and really good at back-end, which is where I do most of my work. Am I "full stack"? How good to you have to be in...well, everything, to call yourself "full stack"?
Full stack allows a single dev to "own" the whole ticket. It's great for startups but not so much at larger (or even medium sized) companies.
If you're "really bad at front-end" I would say: not a full stack. If you can't own a ticket end to end and create a front-end that is at least comparable in quality to a dedicated front-end developer then you are just a backend developer.
Similar to how I know some mobile dev but wouldn't call myself a mobile app developer in a million years.
With that said, I have interviewed a lot of people and full-stack is such a buzzword now that probably 2/3 of the people with it on their resume are in that boat. (good at one level of the stack and just a passing knowledge of the others)
I have had recruiters tell me so many times: "Oh, I found this awesome candidate, they're a full stack developer!" only to find there idea of full stack is they know how to add a border to a div with CSS or they are a front-end wizard but their only backend knowledge is SQL.