State of the Market

[andromedan]

Every ad seems to ask for React now. It leaves me wondering what happened to all the angular front-end work everyone did a few years back. Companies must love rewriting frontends for no apparent reason lol.

I'm not sure that's true from my own experience. Obviously, most of them are in React since the London market is mostly dominated by it, but there are a lot of Angular engagements as well and fewer ones with VUE and Svelte.

The only issue is that nowadays, they ask for a JS framework and a backend language as a minimum and cloud and DevOps capabilities usually. I find it super odd when you are a frontend engineer or dev to expect you to be senior full stack as well. Most of the time, they don't even mention CSS or HTML or accessibility, which are the foundations of frontend.

But hey, companies don't care about our opinions, and the tech market is unregulated with the pros and cons that come with it.

[tsmith]

Clients can have a tendency to hold out for a unicorn, especially in a buyers market like now, if left to their own devices.

An epidemic of PCS - Perfect Candidate Syndrome

Seeing so much "Data" now. Half jobs seem to have that in the title. Data Product Manager.

Wondering if its one of the big players eg Microsoft telling everyone PowerBI will able to monetise their data to create millions in extra revenue.

Then it turns out nobody wants to buy their amazing 'data driven product'

[wettowel]

I can chime in, as a front-end developer.

I've been doing this since early 2004, and I remember the days of Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash. That's how old I am.

And while progress and learning is a part of the trade and I accept that, the job ads are completely detached from reality and anybody who thinks a person can master all of those things at once is delusional.

My primary experience is front-end development, with a very strong understanding of HTML, CSS cascade, accessibility and UX.

I've used pretty much every framework out there, starting with jQuery, Prototype, Mootools (remember those?), then Angular 1, Knockout.js, Backbone, finally React and Vue.

Same for the CSS realm - I am one of the very few dinosaurs that actually *understand* how CSS works, but I also appreciate the beauty of CSS-in-JS and CSS frameworks, so yes, I've worked with Skeleton, Bulma, Bootstrap, Foundation, styled components, CSS modules, LESS, SASS, SCSS, PostCSS, Tailwind, Tailwind frameworks (Flowbite, Daisy UI) etc.

Back in 2004 there was no such thing as front-end or back-end - everything was "full-stack". That is, I had to write PHP and SQL code to save something to the database. But those days are gone, and with the amount of free and commercial open-source headless software, there is no need to do that, unless you're working as a part of a team DEVELOPING one of those products.

These days, if I want to do a full-stack, I'm going to use Next.js or Nuxt with a headless CMS for CRUD and perhaps Prisma for something more tailored, but the truth is, I don't know much about security, database optimisation, or infrastructure management. And anyone expecting me to master these areas is hallucinating.

Sure, I can write an API in Node, express or Next.js, which reads and writes to the DB, I can also put together a cohesive app from the myriad of open-source modules, and it won't even fall apart, but would I consider myself a full-stack cloud engineer (is that the correct term?)?. No way. There are too many things that can go wrong and too many things to master. I strive to deliver quality - and I am very good at what I do, and I don't want to compromise my quality output by dabbling a bit in everything.

I would also personally NEVER hire such jack of all trades, because I know that corners would have to be cut. If the guy were more back-end leaning, he'd probably write me a good API, but what about UI? Can he do accessibility? Does he really truly understand how to make a responsive website? Such that actually works flawlessly across all the devices? Or do they have enough attention to detail and creative flair to ensure that everything is pixel perfect and spacing is even across the app? What about state management? Is he going to just dump an entire JSON response into the state? Or how about the other way around - the UI-focused JS guy - how is he going handle authentication or database management? Is it going to be efficient? Not to mention the infrastructure.

I never wanted to manage Linux machines, I never had any interest in infrastructure or strongly typed languages. I adopted TDD, TypeScript, etc., and am quite proficient at them, but truth be told all those new tools are just tools and mastering them is difficult, mostly due to the cognitive overload and lack of time.

And virtually ALL of the projects I've been a part of - and mind you, those were some of the larger household names in the UK - sucked! Despite having 90% test coverage, bugs were slipping into production through the QA, fonts were missing, elements were misaligned or obscured, menus didn't work, console was full of errors, you name it. What's the point of asking for all those NASA engineering skills, if your team can't deliver a simple button component?

First things first, technology is just a tool, a means to an end. As a business owner, I would go mad, trying to launch a product ASAP only to find out that the $$$ is spent on writing more unit tests or hiring AWS "managers". Of course, writing good quality software and following best practices is important, but above all, software should be RELEASED and USED. If I'm spending more time fiddling with the AWS configuration or fighting TypeScript compiler than releasing software, I am not going to make money. I can't believe businesses don't understand it.

Call me bitter, but this is very frustrating.

The market is dead, the unicorn developers don't exist, and those who say they've mastered it all, are blatantly lying.
The companies don't know who they're looking for, recruitment agents are clueless and can't even read my CV.
And above all, it's really devastating, that after pouring my heart into this and learning all those years, gathering experience and being a part of the biggest delivery teams my skillset is worthless and I am struggling to find a job. It's heartbreaking, especially considering that the job is very mentally draining. I've invested 20 years in web software development and all of a sudden, my skills are no longer relevant. Imagine if this happened to a carpenter or a floor fitter.

[Fraidycat]

I watch the All In Podcast every week (highly recommended!)

David Sachs (silicon valley venture capitalist and Paypal co founder), is calling the end of US software recession that started in the middle of 2022, based on what he is seeing in the board meetings for the software companies he sits on.

I cued the video start at the right point (36 minutes in):

https://youtu.be/IeKUcpU5-Xk?feature=shared&t=2209

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

It's obvious from the start this is an initial screen with bog standard questions that bear no relation to the project.

One of my gigs 3 indian devs grilled me on every single aspect of programming and .net, database, http, web services, azure, all kinds of tools, you name it. Most intense and comprehensive grilling I've ever had.

Got the gig, and what was it? Excel VBA. A technology from 1993 that has barely changed, based on visual basic. Fortunately when I was a wee nipper I was into visual basic so I knew what I was doing because it wasn't part of the ridiculous interview.

[JustKeepSwimming]

I watch the All In Podcast every week (highly recommended!)

David Sachs (silicon valley venture capitalist and Paypal co founder), is calling the end of US software recession that started in the middle of 2022, based on what he is seeing in the board meetings for the software companies he sits on.

I cued the video start at the right point (36 minutes in):

https://youtu.be/IeKUcpU5-Xk?feature=shared&t=2209

Remember the US economy looks very different to the UK/EU economy.

[andromedan]

I can chime in, as a front-end developer.

I've been doing this since early 2004, and I remember the days of Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash. That's how old I am.
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Call me bitter, but this is very frustrating.

The market is dead, the unicorn developers don't exist, and those who say they've mastered it all, are blatantly lying.
The companies don't know who they're looking for, recruitment agents are clueless and can't even read my CV.
And above all, it's really devastating, that after pouring my heart into this and learning all those years, gathering experience and being a part of the biggest delivery teams my skillset is worthless and I am struggling to find a job. It's heartbreaking, especially considering that the job is very mentally draining. I've invested 20 years in web software development and all of a sudden, my skills are no longer relevant. Imagine if this happened to a carpenter or a floor fitter.

This is one of the best posts I've read lately for the front-end market. Frankly, you have double my skillset and mine is not small so I'm surprised that you are still looking.

I should probably write a longer post, but I wanted to comment ASAP.

[BigDataPro]

I can chime in, as a front-end developer.

I've been doing this since early 2004, and I remember the days of Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash. That's how old I am.
...

+1 - couldn't agree more.

[tjccjt01]

Imagine if this happened to a carpenter or a floor fitter.

Someone already has:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerH...e_programmers/

[wettowel]

This is one of the best posts I've read lately for the front-end market. Frankly, you have double my skillset and mine is not small so I'm surprised that you are still looking.

I should probably write a longer post, but I wanted to comment ASAP.

Ive been looking for the past 6 months, had an interview recently for an outside IR35 role for a large company which I failed. On what? On the basis of my lack of experience with Kubernetes. I don’t even know what the thing is!

The role was for a lead FE guy. And they desperately need one because their website is not responsive AT ALL. Like, it only works on desktop and it does so poorly.

But hey, who am I to tell them that. Kubernetes FTW! I hope they find their Kubernetes guy and he fixes their website.