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I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

artur-martsinkovskyi.github.io

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Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#71

Post by ebiester »

mntmoss wrote: post #40
ebiester wrote: post #30

So, it seems like the pendulum is swinging back. I remember companies with more dedicated specialists, and it could be challenging to ship small features due to large coordination efforts. Further, sometimes the work is unbalanced. In my current company, we recently had a backend-dominant release in a way that the frontend team didn't have as much work. That team rolled up its sleeves and dug in to solve problems, ev…

I think the broad historical sweep here is sort of along the lines of: * From the early microcomputer era onwards, applications development focused on getting developers that knew the base platform or operating system(e.g. if you knew "Win32" dev, that was solid in the mid-90's) - and it was one platform per category of application, and for applications that integrated a database you also had platforms like Foxpro, A…

I think there's truth to that when looking at internal software, but external (B2C) software will continue to live in this division. (Think of hotels.com as an application, for example. There's no world where you can build a hypercard app that meets those needs.)

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#72

Post by draw_down »

I am tired of this too. No more QA people, in a lot of cases no more PMs. Just take on more and more roles and responsibilities and everything is your problem and your fault. You figure out the customer impact. You do the scoping and the development and the QA and the SRE work. Eat it. It sucks.

I’m hoping I can make enough in the next few years so I don’t have to do it anymore at all. This industry is rotten.

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#75

Post by root_axis »

exfaang wrote: post #20
root_axis wrote: post #11

> As years go by the industry is going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of developer-focused engineering process and developers go on to combine more and more responsibilities beneath the surface of single cranium. Why do you think developer salaries are so high? As the advancement and sophistication of open-source and SaaS offerings increasingly empowers individual developers to do more for businesses, so do d…

I disagree with that assessment. Sophisticated open source, IaaS, and SaaS offerings greatly lower the barrier of entry in this industry and ought to have a negative effect on wages as dictated by supply and demand. Your argument undermines itself by highlighting that a single open-source-equipped person can do the job of 3 grey beards of old. That automation of labor runs counter to rising wages. As another data poi…

> Sophisticated open source, IaaS, and SaaS offerings greatly lower the barrier of entry in this industry

I would question this assumption. In my view, the existence of these tools actually increases the barrier to entry because they represent additional skills that developers are expected to posses in order to be competitive in the job market. This is actually a common complaint among developers whenever a new technology gains viral popularity (e.g. AWS, react, k8s).

> That automation of labor runs counter to rising wages

Well of course it does, except for the people who are paid very well to build the automated systems (i.e. programmers). Fortunately for programmers there still isn't enough supply to meet demand, so senior developers on the frontiers of popular technologies can command outsized salaries but still can't do enough work to eliminate the need for their less sophisticated colleagues (yet).

> specialist steeped in closed source arcana

Sure, that doesn't really contradict what I'm saying, but I'd also note that whatever closed source project one might be working on is almost certainly benefiting from a gigantic open-source force multiplier in some form or another.

> When the demand is met and equilibrium reached, I expect salaries to normalize back to what other technical professionals command (e.g. aerospace and civil engineers).

On this we agree. I tell developers all the time that they should enjoy it while it lasts because this definitely won't last forever. I'm pretty bearish on things like AI programmers, but I think open-source and commodity B2B software solutions are rapidly approaching the point where the costs associated with running an engineering department will appear much less imperative.

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#76

Post by root_axis »

20years wrote: post #16
root_axis wrote: post #11

> As years go by the industry is going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of developer-focused engineering process and developers go on to combine more and more responsibilities beneath the surface of single cranium. Why do you think developer salaries are so high? As the advancement and sophistication of open-source and SaaS offerings increasingly empowers individual developers to do more for businesses, so do d…

The problem that I have seen is most companies don't want to pay a skilled full-stack developer what they are worth. They think $100k is the going rate and unfortunately a lot of junior developers are calling themselves full-stack and jumping at that salary. Then the lines get blurred and the true value of a full-stack developer gets diminished.

A senior full-stack developer has so many opportunities that they have the privilege of only considering positions with a compensation level acceptable to them.

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#77

Post by layoric »

jon-wood wrote: post #36

An early stage startup probably doesn’t have enough money to hire specialists, and doesn’t have the workflow down to make optimal use of them even they could afford someone in every position. At that scale you need one or two people who can do everything - probably they won’t do the best job of everything, but they’ll get your company off the ground. Once a company starts scaling up they’ll find that they need someon…

I agree with the small vs large. Would be interested in at what head count you’ve seen this transition happen? Especially the need for project/product managers.

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#78

Post by geezerjay »

avip wrote: post #29
dgzl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently was looking for new work. When trying to apply to Developer opportunities, I realized that recruiters largely didn't know what they were talking about. Many times I was told that my Computer Science degree, large school projects, personal projects such as random apps and maintaining an Arch Linux setup, awards such as winning 1st place in a Google Hackathon, several years of student work including iOS deve…

I recently had a recruiter questioning my application for a "senior developer" role as "You seem to have no background in software". I told her I have "a background" of well over 10 years as a developer, and consider it my profession. "So why did you study Biology"? she replied.

HR drones focus on qualifications because it frees them from the responsibility of actually having to evaluate and corroborate that a candidate is competent in a field.

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#79

Post by je42 »

you need a team for larger applications, however the members of the team should have overlapping skills. so you don't always need to do everything all the time. it is fine to be a specialist in some areas. actually, a team needs specialists, to solve difficult blocking problems.

However, when you got someone with excellent frontend skills, they still should know how the backend works since they interact with it. they should also be able to pick up changes there. since amount of work is not always balanced. further, doing work in a particular area outside of the main expertise raises the understanding of specifics there as well increses the overview of the complete system.

in the end, being full-stack dev is a strategy to prevent local optimization and comm-overhead and emphasize global optimization to develop a good application for the customer.

Re: I don't want to be a full-fullstack developer

#80

Post by choeger »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #66
choeger wrote: post #41

> you don’t expect the dentist to cure your heart and neurosurgeon to fix your hemorrhoids. That's your problem right there. Your frontend is not as different from your backend as dentristy is from neurosurgery. If you think it is, you might lack some understanding of how things work. Tbh., whenever someone hails the specialization and how their particular field is so special, I hear them saying "I really do not want…

> That's your problem right there. Your frontend is not as different from your backend as dentristy is from neurosurgery. I'm not a neurosurgeon, or a dentist, but this doesn't strike me as true. Front-end dev uses totally different tools and languages, and a different set of design principles, than back-end dev. It didn't use to be this way, but it definitely is now. There's almost no cross-over in skills now, espec…

> totally different tools and languages

do they, though? What's distinguishing JavaScript from, say, a poorly implemented lisp? What's the main difference between typescript and a poorly implemented ML? Syntax? Come on! There are maybe a handful of really different programming languages designs. And only three of them are really widespread.

> There's almost no cross-over in skills now, especially with Elm-derived front-end frameworks taking over.

If you are talking about Elm the language then it is very clearly influenced by Haskell. It is literally rooted in FRP. So to understand elm you need to know something about functional programming and type systems. Then you read the docs and you are in the game after a few days.

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