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But you'll need to understand what's going on at a deeper level (Data design/Caching/SQL/scaleability etc) so there will be things to learn - but they are much more transferable across technologies than the front end, and at the start you can rely on tech lead/senior devs to have that knowledge for you.
There is a bias in software: if you can see it visually it’s worth less. That bias has generally resulted in lower compensation for front end work irrespective of inherent technical challenges. The result of that bias impacts hiring and trust which then dictate approach and implementation.
However, because people like to see things, there are more people wanting to do frontend and hence the compensation is lower.
The same with game developing. This is definitely not easier than frontend or backend, probably harder. But still paid less, because it's so popular and many people want to do it.
A backend engineer usually does not write code to run on multiple different versions of CPU. A frontend engineer has to support multiple browsers. A backend engineer worries about scale, a frontend engineer not so much. https://ashishb.net/tech/server-vs-mobile-development-where-...
There is a bias in software: if you can see it visually it’s worth less. That bias has generally resulted in lower compensation for front end work irrespective of inherent technical challenges. The result of that bias impacts hiring and trust which then dictate approach and implementation.
During the same time wages for people building frontends which needed more engineering knowledge (early mobiles, WinForms, those horrible old Java frontends) were higher because there were less people capable of doing the world.
In 2021 web development has moved on to the point that we're often building websites in fully features programming languages with heavyweight frameworks (React/Angular). They are paid well. You still see people who work with HTML/CSS/Photoshop and they are generally paid less.
See: Quality Assurance and the different between people who can test manually and who can automate their work.
Easier:
+ You don't need to write a thousand edge case code to cover different devices
+ There's less "trial and error" trying to figure out what sequence of CSS properties is needed to adjust some of the simplest of designs
+ More choices of languages available (should Javascript / Typescript not float your boat)
+ More consistency in that you only need to worry about your backend language and maybe SQL (if you're not using an ORM -- which frankly developers shouldn't imo)
+ Easier to write unit tests
Harder:
- Lazy code becomes more than just an annoyance, it will have performance impacts on your servers thus directly costing your company more money
- You can no longer rely on other people to deal with security for you. Mistakes aren't just going to be rendering bugs
- You don't have something immediate that you demo if there isn't already a UI mocked up
- You need to rely more heavily on unit tests
And if your back end developers are also doubling as DevOps then your job will get exponentially harder still as you then have to manage infrastructure as well. But a lot of places will have dedicated infrastructure guys.
Personally I much prefer backend development to frontend development. I (personally) find it more predictable and easier to reason. However a lot of people prefer frontend development if just because you get to see instant results of your code
If by backend you mean web backend. I would say that backend development is slower moving in terms of changes to technologies and frameworks used than front end. But you'll need to understand what's going on at a deeper level (Data design/Caching/SQL/scaleability etc) so there will be things to learn - but they are much more transferable across technologies than the front end, and at the start you can rely on tech le…