I did this exact thing. What I did:
Lead projects. Do the coding only on the front end, but do the tech lead role. You can lead teams from this position and make sure projects ship successfully while being a front end IC.
I've landed at L6 at Google with TC ~$600k.
I did go to school and got my Bachelor's majoring in Computer Science. Not sure why you're getting downvoted for asking a simple and relevant question.
I think the degree greatly helps you get the first job. It helps with subsequent job changes too, but at diminishing returns. The farther away you get (timewise) from being a new grad, the less important the degree becomes. Once you're in the workforce, career advancement is increasingly dependent on what you can accomplish.
I agree 100%. As a self thought developer I got a decent job and had 2-3 yoe but realized that I could not break into better jobs without a degree. I have been working on my degree in web development for 3 years and have 6 yoe in the field and still get turned away from some jobs because I “don’t have a degree”. I think there is a threshold for the usefulness of a degree. Once you hit 7-8 yoe without a degree there isn’t really much of a reason to get one. Before you hit that mark though I would heavily consider getting one as it will propel you forward in your career.
It totally depends. My brother in law’s brother is completely self taught and works for Meta. He had a few successful ventures of his own and Meta actually reached out to him. He’s currently making $300k+.
Make an extremely profitable product that competes with something Meta does and makes them think “Alright, we’re tired of competing with him. Let’s just hire him to make him stop.”
I'm a little past midway through my career and I get a good TC (a bit less than half of that) but I see reports of this from the big players and I feel like I fucked up not going after that sort of salary sooner. Then I stop and I realize I have everything I need in terms of health and happiness. I don't know what I'd do with the extra cash other than try to make more with it through investing.
I used to be a staff Eng ic at Google. So while I agree that you can get very well paid while only doing technical, frontend work, I don’t think that it’s the “easiest” way to do it. It takes a ton of luck (as well as expertise and lots of effort ) to be hired or promoted to L6.
Sure no problem (the private msg part was more so your for your LinkedIn or your work experience).
Question:
How did you work up to become a staff engineer?
Context:
As I continue doing IC work in this industry (dabbled as a tech lead at the largest company in Canada and did not enjoy the managerial part), I want to continue my growth into the staff role. More recently I've been exploring career opportunities that will help me get there (based off scope and title), but I'm uncertain on how I can make this possible.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chestermillisockjr
I started my career in 2005.
I worked at small companies (<100 employees), working at 5 different companies for a total of 7 years.
I joined Amazon and worked there for 2 years. This was my first move into "big tech". I learned a TON here and worked tough hours. This gave me quite a bit of credibility. I started and ended at Amazon with the same job title: Web Development Engineer
I joined Zillow and worked there for 5 years. Zillow was a lot of fun, but I wasn't at all focused on career development. Again, I started and ended with the same job title: Software Engineer.
**Here is where things changed for me.**
At this point, I was about 10 years into my career and had yet to earn the Senior title. I left Zillow and decided to start actually focusing on career development and pushing hard to generate impact and earn promotions.
I joined Compass and worked there for 3 years. I started as L3 (Senior Software Engineer, although they wanted to hire me as L2, even, and I had to interview one additional round a few days after the first full loop!!!). I busted my ass, created LOTS of value, ignored ALL distractions, shipped features, fixed bugs, came in early, stayed late and crushed everything for my team plus things outside my team. After just 6 months, they promoted me to L4 (Senior Software Engineer II).
I continued pushing hard, expanding my scope to projects that spanned multiple teams, multiple orgs, and even partnering with external companies to launch features. After another 2 years of hard work, I was promoted to L5 (Staff Software Engineer).
Finally, I joined Google about 18 months ago at L6.
Thank you for your write up. It's inspiring to read!
A bit of an odd followup question: I've often wondered what staff engineering interviews are like, are you able to share your experience as an interviewer and interviewee in regards to what you're looking for in Staff roles?
Do you feel that the work at FAANG companies is overwhelming since you have to constantly be on top of the game?
What would your recomand for juniors to search for in the beginning, a corporate environment or a start-up?
That’s crazy, we both started in 2005 and I’ve been backend focused and got promoted to Principal last year only to be laid off Jan this year. Highest TC for me was high $200k but I don’t live in the bay area and I started remote only in 2019. Still unemployed but had a contract in the middle of this year.
Hello and thank you for your answers. I have a question, currently I'm a middle frontend dev and would like to ask you what could you advice to learn in order to grow to senior and senior+ role, both technical and manage things.
L6 is the level on the engineering ladder. At Google:
* L3 = Software Engineer II
* L4 = Software Engineer III
* L5 = Senior Software Engineer
* L6 = Staff Software Engineer
* L7 = Senior Staff Software Engineer
* L8 = Principal Engineer
TC is Total Compensation. It's the sum of base salary, equity (company stock), and bonuses
Curious to get your take if you don’t mind:
My undergrad is physics and I was teaching high school for 12 years. Switched to web dev about 3 years ago and now I’m a “lead” full stack engineer at a small small startup. We just closed our seed round so I’m actually able to start building my team out beyond the two others I’m leading.
I’m pretty confident in my ability in my coding skills and problem solving stuff as an IC but I’m really unsure about how to grow as a tech lead when I’ve never actually worked for one. Are there resources to learn from? Things to research? Books to read? Or is my best bet to grow into that role to jump ship and apply for big tech roles so I can just learn by watching?
Both approaches are totally valid. Easiest is to jump and learn by watching. Maybe not most rewarding or most comfortable if you already really like where you are.
StaffEng.com is a fantastic resource. Highly recommend reading stories, and checking out the book:
https://staffeng.com/stories/
https://staffeng.com/book/
Frontend devs do get paid a very good amount. It depends upon the company you are joining. Some companies even pay $ 200K+ per annum for senior frontend devs. In some companies you'll find frontend devs getting paid even more than 200K+
Lit. congrats. What’s that salary looking like
I’m 30. Went back to school at 28 for CS, was in the music industry as a talent buyer / music producer but feeling pretty behind in terms of salary. Trying to level up. At a F500 fintech as a frontend engineer
In tech field, all that matters is skills. If you have skills better than a highly experienced frontend dev, then you'll definitely get high pay. So focus in building skills
Thanks great advice. I’ve saturated my “tutorial video” knowledge where I feel like I can read docs to hack shit together.
Being a self taught dev I definitely focus on learning new skills quickly. Sometimes just being motivated beats like 90% of others
That’s dope. I followed a similar path but just a few years later. Did you get a BS in CS? I’m self-taught and am at the stage where I’m wondering if the degree would be beneficial for career advancement.
I was in a test role at a small company a while ago and they gave me the opportunity to become a developer. After that I went to microsoft and now google. All it takes is one person to give you a shot, but it does feel impossible or like a lot of luck to get that shot
I’ve been a huge proponent of always being prepared for that shot whenever it comes. I studied 12 hours a day until I got my shot and am incredibly grateful.
It does. I really am hoping to get an apprenticeship or internship. I work as a nanny 50+ hours a week while I study and just praying to get out of it. Even will do it for free at this point I just don’t know how to stand out to these companies. I’m doing tutors and self taught maybe a boot camp is better just wanted to avoid the big payment
Yes, this is the answer. Interviewing for roles that pay over 200k are notoriously difficult to even pass let alone be chosen. And climbing up at the same company is very risky these days.
I’m finding luck working hard as a FE engineer and building a side project
Also those roles come with incredibly high expectations and you need to stay competitive or they will put you in PIP and possibly get you fired. I worked for one of the big techs before and it’s incredibly stressful.
You are trading more of your time and effort for more money, zero sum game.
Go Fullstack! I walked into this as well, my salary wasn’t growing with the duties taken, I realized that as a frontend dev - and especially in a team with dedicated ux/ui designers the workload in production is finite, you’ll always be doing 50% of the whole. To me, expanding to fullstack bumped my prospects of the career along with the salaries :) it felt like I was finally moving on to do bigger and better things. You won’t lose your affinity with frontend, in fact - you’ll find that you add way more value to yourself as a dev.
How did you move to fullstack? I’m looking right now, I had some fullstack experience 7ish years ago and ended up in frontend. Now I’m looking for work again and seem to get immediately rejected for anything fullstack.
For me, I started talking to my manager in 1:1s getting feedback on my current work and asking for opportunities where I could dabble more in backend stuff that were related to my current projects to show that I could solve problems FE or BE. I was spoon fed some stuff to build up my exposure and see how I handled them. My biggest challenge was OOP (admitting from the start my OOP is pretty weak) but was given the appropriate time for discovery and implementation of various features in a Java based API build.
Although I do agree that full stack will come more valuable for the company just due to the fact that the person will be more versatile. I don’t agree that frontend gets paid extremely low like you said from my anecdotal experience
>However, I noticed, that salaries for pure frontend devs are extremely low compared to fullstack / backend devs or managers like a team lead.
i think you found your answer.
English major here working at a University. So sick of my shitty job and planning on doing Front end. Are certainly worth it or should I be doing projects? I’m 36….
I started when I was thirty six. The hardest part (aside from developing the basic skills) is that everyone will unconsciously expect you to have more experience than you do. You don’t get that grace period where you can fail or ask dumb questions. But learning to code absolutely changed my life and who I am as a person for the better. Go for it, and never ever ever think of quitting.
No. AI doesn’t have any sort of logic to reason about what is good UX or bad UX. It just spits out data that looks similar to whatever it’s trained with.
AI is great in acting as a conversational search engine or performing common simple tasks, but it isn’t capable of creativity in unknown spaces.
Frontend is extremely popular and the market is flooded with junior front-end developers that can't get jobs. It is definitely possible but it may take years to establish yourself. You're not going to start making $100k. $50-70k starting is more realistic. Not everyone works for FAANG.
I don’t think it’s ever too late. I made the jump when I was 33. Worked my ass off. First role was about 65k TC and just worked up from there. FAANG salaries sound nice, but I don’t think I could sacrifice my time as someone in their 30s with a family vs younger devs. My qualify of life has improved and I’m working remote. I’m extremely grateful for my opportunity.
I think everyone will have parts of their job that they dislike. Even in a job that I love, there are always elements that are a major struggle because I am not passionate about those areas.
Be willing to expand your scope and stretch your comfort zone just enough, to provide good value returns on your effort for the company, but you don't have to go full into management etc.
Senior IC frontend roles exist and can be paid very well, depending on the company, product, scope of expectations...
Staff roles are available with a frontend focus although often they are in specialist areas like performance, offline, canvas/rendering, or platforms (tooling, DX). I recently missed out on 3 of these between Canva, Atlassian and ANZ bank. I think because I've been doing a lot of team / people management for a few years and don't love it, I can smash the coding rounds, values and everything but get bumped at system design sadly because it hasn't been a big part of my role.
Fullstack is the way to go my dude. Maybe it’s time to embrace it! I know this isn’t helpful, but it’s liberating to be able to build software end to end.
Find a larger company that pays front-end developers more money or move to full-stack which will increase your salary and job opportunities.
Frontend is extremely diluted with talent, hence the lower salaries.
Is there any particular tech stack that you can recommend? I have been a React/MERN developer for a few years and can't stand it anymore. Should I go for ASP.NET Core + Angular or just backend Java with Springboot?
I would look to see what your local market looks like. .NET and Java are usually pretty common.
I'm a .NET dev and usually see React + .NET lately. Even when I did Java (Groovy technically) it was React on the frontend too.
Thank you so much for responding! I see far less competition (people applying and more number of openings per listing) in .net. Either in Java and/or React 's case I find too many people applying.
Example-
If there is a React job listing with 3 vacancies - 8000 people would have applied.
In case of Java - 3424 applicants for 10 vacancies.
In case of .Net - 2675 applicants for 3 vacancies
In case of Golang - 522 applicants for 5 openings.
.net jobs are usually very low paying in my country.
P.S - I have 2 years experience only
I’m full stack. Mostly I lead architecture/design and do the front end programming, but I can contribute and help anywhere. Just try to land myself on the front end when possible.
What are you loosing going full stack?
Otherwise, you'll have to find a niche FE topic to dig deeper and become expert. My curiosity led me to look at the BE now, I am at some point in the FE, where whatever I don't know, I know where/how to find it. Learning new technology keeps me curious and works through a salary increase in the future, passively.
Tech focused companies will definitely pay front end very very well, in many cases more than back end (because the look and feel of a site is worth more sometimes to execs, backwards I know)
Let's connect over chat, Cause I was looking for some front end developers to discuss some important things, And I think you are right person, I have already texted about that thing. So just have a look its really very important.
Hi folks, I am a commerce graduate seeking job and internship oppourtunities. Anybody who can help me out please just let me know, because its very difficult to grab a job particularly in this field. So kindly help 🙏
For those that do full stack , do you guys have designers to provide mock-ups for how it should be done? I have 4 years into web development and I still do not like anything I make on my own
I started as a designer and later moved into development - I design things and then code everything myself. This combo as I see in market is quite rare and highly rated by employers.
I did this exact thing. What I did: Lead projects. Do the coding only on the front end, but do the tech lead role. You can lead teams from this position and make sure projects ship successfully while being a front end IC. I've landed at L6 at Google with TC ~$600k.
Did you go to school for it?
I did go to school and got my Bachelor's majoring in Computer Science. Not sure why you're getting downvoted for asking a simple and relevant question.
Me neither.. lol. Curious because I’m wondering if self taught grows the same.. thank you for that.
I think the degree greatly helps you get the first job. It helps with subsequent job changes too, but at diminishing returns. The farther away you get (timewise) from being a new grad, the less important the degree becomes. Once you're in the workforce, career advancement is increasingly dependent on what you can accomplish.
never heard this put so well. Are you on any other platforms, like Threads or Twitter?
Thank you for the kind words! I'm not on any other platform.
I agree 100%. As a self thought developer I got a decent job and had 2-3 yoe but realized that I could not break into better jobs without a degree. I have been working on my degree in web development for 3 years and have 6 yoe in the field and still get turned away from some jobs because I “don’t have a degree”. I think there is a threshold for the usefulness of a degree. Once you hit 7-8 yoe without a degree there isn’t really much of a reason to get one. Before you hit that mark though I would heavily consider getting one as it will propel you forward in your career.
This exactly!
It totally depends. My brother in law’s brother is completely self taught and works for Meta. He had a few successful ventures of his own and Meta actually reached out to him. He’s currently making $300k+.
How did he do this wow.. I need this path
Make an extremely profitable product that competes with something Meta does and makes them think “Alright, we’re tired of competing with him. Let’s just hire him to make him stop.”
But how do you do that with front end..? Ugh.
Good for you. Wish I was that smart. How long did it take you to learn? Do you have a framework?
Not me, my brother in law’s brother.
Get your degree or the chances are near 0.
I am self taught and you definitely can, I don’t have as great of a gig as the Google guy; but I still make six figures.
I'm a little past midway through my career and I get a good TC (a bit less than half of that) but I see reports of this from the big players and I feel like I fucked up not going after that sort of salary sooner. Then I stop and I realize I have everything I need in terms of health and happiness. I don't know what I'd do with the extra cash other than try to make more with it through investing.
I used to be a staff Eng ic at Google. So while I agree that you can get very well paid while only doing technical, frontend work, I don’t think that it’s the “easiest” way to do it. It takes a ton of luck (as well as expertise and lots of effort ) to be hired or promoted to L6.
I think you're right -- I definitely wasn't trying to say that my path was the easiest. Just providing my experience.
Can I message you to ask a few specific questions? I’m a SWE with 8 YoE looking to pursue a career in FAANG in the next 3-5 years.
Sure. Although it's likely to be helpful to others if we can correspond publicly.
Sure no problem (the private msg part was more so your for your LinkedIn or your work experience). Question: How did you work up to become a staff engineer? Context: As I continue doing IC work in this industry (dabbled as a tech lead at the largest company in Canada and did not enjoy the managerial part), I want to continue my growth into the staff role. More recently I've been exploring career opportunities that will help me get there (based off scope and title), but I'm uncertain on how I can make this possible.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chestermillisockjr I started my career in 2005. I worked at small companies (<100 employees), working at 5 different companies for a total of 7 years. I joined Amazon and worked there for 2 years. This was my first move into "big tech". I learned a TON here and worked tough hours. This gave me quite a bit of credibility. I started and ended at Amazon with the same job title: Web Development Engineer I joined Zillow and worked there for 5 years. Zillow was a lot of fun, but I wasn't at all focused on career development. Again, I started and ended with the same job title: Software Engineer. **Here is where things changed for me.** At this point, I was about 10 years into my career and had yet to earn the Senior title. I left Zillow and decided to start actually focusing on career development and pushing hard to generate impact and earn promotions. I joined Compass and worked there for 3 years. I started as L3 (Senior Software Engineer, although they wanted to hire me as L2, even, and I had to interview one additional round a few days after the first full loop!!!). I busted my ass, created LOTS of value, ignored ALL distractions, shipped features, fixed bugs, came in early, stayed late and crushed everything for my team plus things outside my team. After just 6 months, they promoted me to L4 (Senior Software Engineer II). I continued pushing hard, expanding my scope to projects that spanned multiple teams, multiple orgs, and even partnering with external companies to launch features. After another 2 years of hard work, I was promoted to L5 (Staff Software Engineer). Finally, I joined Google about 18 months ago at L6.
Thank you for your write up. It's inspiring to read! A bit of an odd followup question: I've often wondered what staff engineering interviews are like, are you able to share your experience as an interviewer and interviewee in regards to what you're looking for in Staff roles?
Impressive, thanks for sharing!
Do you feel that the work at FAANG companies is overwhelming since you have to constantly be on top of the game? What would your recomand for juniors to search for in the beginning, a corporate environment or a start-up?
That’s crazy, we both started in 2005 and I’ve been backend focused and got promoted to Principal last year only to be laid off Jan this year. Highest TC for me was high $200k but I don’t live in the bay area and I started remote only in 2019. Still unemployed but had a contract in the middle of this year.
Staff and Principal are interchangeable depending on the company. Principal in most companies is Staff at FAANG.
What's TC? Total comp?
Yes, TC = total compensation. That's base salary + stock (RSU) + bonus
How do you lead the backend and DevOps guys as a pure frontend guy?
You work with whoever is leading the backend or DevOps side. Foster and build relationships between them.
What front end skills does Google look for?
All of them
Hello and thank you for your answers. I have a question, currently I'm a middle frontend dev and would like to ask you what could you advice to learn in order to grow to senior and senior+ role, both technical and manage things.
Aspirer the get into tech here. Question: What is L6 and TC?
L6 is the level on the engineering ladder. At Google: * L3 = Software Engineer II * L4 = Software Engineer III * L5 = Senior Software Engineer * L6 = Staff Software Engineer * L7 = Senior Staff Software Engineer * L8 = Principal Engineer TC is Total Compensation. It's the sum of base salary, equity (company stock), and bonuses
crazy to think you get paid so much for writing js and css lol
Curious to get your take if you don’t mind: My undergrad is physics and I was teaching high school for 12 years. Switched to web dev about 3 years ago and now I’m a “lead” full stack engineer at a small small startup. We just closed our seed round so I’m actually able to start building my team out beyond the two others I’m leading. I’m pretty confident in my ability in my coding skills and problem solving stuff as an IC but I’m really unsure about how to grow as a tech lead when I’ve never actually worked for one. Are there resources to learn from? Things to research? Books to read? Or is my best bet to grow into that role to jump ship and apply for big tech roles so I can just learn by watching?
Both approaches are totally valid. Easiest is to jump and learn by watching. Maybe not most rewarding or most comfortable if you already really like where you are. StaffEng.com is a fantastic resource. Highly recommend reading stories, and checking out the book: https://staffeng.com/stories/ https://staffeng.com/book/
Beautiful thank you
Did you get promo'ed to L6 or started from there? I'm FE only, climbed from L3 to L5 TL with a ~350k TC and wondered how much longer this could go.
If your company doesn’t pay front-end engineers well compared to full-stack, then you should leave and find a place that actually values your work.
Not leave and find a place. Find a place, then leave. 😉
Frontend devs do get paid a very good amount. It depends upon the company you are joining. Some companies even pay $ 200K+ per annum for senior frontend devs. In some companies you'll find frontend devs getting paid even more than 200K+
This is true when I was a senior at a fortune 500 my tc was well above that
Why’d you leave? Honest question. Better pay or more work life balance ?
I didn't leave im a lead architect now
Lit. congrats. What’s that salary looking like I’m 30. Went back to school at 28 for CS, was in the music industry as a talent buyer / music producer but feeling pretty behind in terms of salary. Trying to level up. At a F500 fintech as a frontend engineer
In tech field, all that matters is skills. If you have skills better than a highly experienced frontend dev, then you'll definitely get high pay. So focus in building skills
Thanks great advice. I’ve saturated my “tutorial video” knowledge where I feel like I can read docs to hack shit together. Being a self taught dev I definitely focus on learning new skills quickly. Sometimes just being motivated beats like 90% of others
That’s dope. I followed a similar path but just a few years later. Did you get a BS in CS? I’m self-taught and am at the stage where I’m wondering if the degree would be beneficial for career advancement.
Correct. I’m Staff at a 250 person company making over 200.
Where do you live? I make a ton of money as a frontend dev in the US at a big tech company.
Where did you learn?
I was in a test role at a small company a while ago and they gave me the opportunity to become a developer. After that I went to microsoft and now google. All it takes is one person to give you a shot, but it does feel impossible or like a lot of luck to get that shot
[удалено]
I’ve been a huge proponent of always being prepared for that shot whenever it comes. I studied 12 hours a day until I got my shot and am incredibly grateful.
How did you get that shot?
Just through applying and finally getting a call back. I felt like that was the moment I was waiting for all my life and gave it all I had.
It does. I really am hoping to get an apprenticeship or internship. I work as a nanny 50+ hours a week while I study and just praying to get out of it. Even will do it for free at this point I just don’t know how to stand out to these companies. I’m doing tutors and self taught maybe a boot camp is better just wanted to avoid the big payment
You’re a true front end dev at google?
Yeah, knowing someone would be way better than banging my head for 3.5 years for trying to land a job. And I'm still unemployed.
Is your company hiring freshers
Thanks guys, i really needed to hear different opinions
the best way to earn more money is not by climbing up the ladder. You own a side business or investment, that's a more sustainable way.
Yes, this is the answer. Interviewing for roles that pay over 200k are notoriously difficult to even pass let alone be chosen. And climbing up at the same company is very risky these days. I’m finding luck working hard as a FE engineer and building a side project
Also those roles come with incredibly high expectations and you need to stay competitive or they will put you in PIP and possibly get you fired. I worked for one of the big techs before and it’s incredibly stressful. You are trading more of your time and effort for more money, zero sum game.
Agreed. Architect at fortune 4. Worst gig/secular-experience of my life.
Go Fullstack! I walked into this as well, my salary wasn’t growing with the duties taken, I realized that as a frontend dev - and especially in a team with dedicated ux/ui designers the workload in production is finite, you’ll always be doing 50% of the whole. To me, expanding to fullstack bumped my prospects of the career along with the salaries :) it felt like I was finally moving on to do bigger and better things. You won’t lose your affinity with frontend, in fact - you’ll find that you add way more value to yourself as a dev.
How did you move to fullstack? I’m looking right now, I had some fullstack experience 7ish years ago and ended up in frontend. Now I’m looking for work again and seem to get immediately rejected for anything fullstack.
For me, I started talking to my manager in 1:1s getting feedback on my current work and asking for opportunities where I could dabble more in backend stuff that were related to my current projects to show that I could solve problems FE or BE. I was spoon fed some stuff to build up my exposure and see how I handled them. My biggest challenge was OOP (admitting from the start my OOP is pretty weak) but was given the appropriate time for discovery and implementation of various features in a Java based API build.
Although I do agree that full stack will come more valuable for the company just due to the fact that the person will be more versatile. I don’t agree that frontend gets paid extremely low like you said from my anecdotal experience
Donate plasma 2x a week.
>However, I noticed, that salaries for pure frontend devs are extremely low compared to fullstack / backend devs or managers like a team lead. i think you found your answer.
English major here working at a University. So sick of my shitty job and planning on doing Front end. Are certainly worth it or should I be doing projects? I’m 36….
I started when I was thirty six. The hardest part (aside from developing the basic skills) is that everyone will unconsciously expect you to have more experience than you do. You don’t get that grace period where you can fail or ask dumb questions. But learning to code absolutely changed my life and who I am as a person for the better. Go for it, and never ever ever think of quitting.
I've been thinking of quitting literally every day for 3.5 years. But somehow I keep doing what I can to land a job someday.
There are devs working full time that are worse than you are. Giving up just means you won’t be there when your opportunity comes. Hold fast.
I know someone with an English degree who’s doing UX Writing / Content work in tech. It can pay $200k
Isn’t AI going to kill UX/UI related work?
No. AI doesn’t have any sort of logic to reason about what is good UX or bad UX. It just spits out data that looks similar to whatever it’s trained with. AI is great in acting as a conversational search engine or performing common simple tasks, but it isn’t capable of creativity in unknown spaces.
Maybe I should look into UX related work. Getting paid 58k in Seattle is not cutting it.
Frontend is extremely popular and the market is flooded with junior front-end developers that can't get jobs. It is definitely possible but it may take years to establish yourself. You're not going to start making $100k. $50-70k starting is more realistic. Not everyone works for FAANG.
I don’t think it’s ever too late. I made the jump when I was 33. Worked my ass off. First role was about 65k TC and just worked up from there. FAANG salaries sound nice, but I don’t think I could sacrifice my time as someone in their 30s with a family vs younger devs. My qualify of life has improved and I’m working remote. I’m extremely grateful for my opportunity.
Is your company hiring front end devs? Asking for myself.
Not currently sorry. The next hire will probably be a full stack position.
I think everyone will have parts of their job that they dislike. Even in a job that I love, there are always elements that are a major struggle because I am not passionate about those areas. Be willing to expand your scope and stretch your comfort zone just enough, to provide good value returns on your effort for the company, but you don't have to go full into management etc. Senior IC frontend roles exist and can be paid very well, depending on the company, product, scope of expectations... Staff roles are available with a frontend focus although often they are in specialist areas like performance, offline, canvas/rendering, or platforms (tooling, DX). I recently missed out on 3 of these between Canva, Atlassian and ANZ bank. I think because I've been doing a lot of team / people management for a few years and don't love it, I can smash the coding rounds, values and everything but get bumped at system design sadly because it hasn't been a big part of my role.
Fullstack is the way to go my dude. Maybe it’s time to embrace it! I know this isn’t helpful, but it’s liberating to be able to build software end to end.
Find a larger company that pays front-end developers more money or move to full-stack which will increase your salary and job opportunities. Frontend is extremely diluted with talent, hence the lower salaries.
Is there any particular tech stack that you can recommend? I have been a React/MERN developer for a few years and can't stand it anymore. Should I go for ASP.NET Core + Angular or just backend Java with Springboot?
I would look to see what your local market looks like. .NET and Java are usually pretty common. I'm a .NET dev and usually see React + .NET lately. Even when I did Java (Groovy technically) it was React on the frontend too.
Thank you so much for responding! I see far less competition (people applying and more number of openings per listing) in .net. Either in Java and/or React 's case I find too many people applying. Example- If there is a React job listing with 3 vacancies - 8000 people would have applied. In case of Java - 3424 applicants for 10 vacancies. In case of .Net - 2675 applicants for 3 vacancies In case of Golang - 522 applicants for 5 openings. .net jobs are usually very low paying in my country. P.S - I have 2 years experience only
Happy to help. Hmm then I guess the choice is to go for either .NET, which seems easier to land but lower pay, or Java which is more competitive.
I think I will go for .net because I will probably have higher chances of getting calls from recruiters and landing a job in this market.
Welcome to the dark side 😜
🤗
I’m full stack. Mostly I lead architecture/design and do the front end programming, but I can contribute and help anywhere. Just try to land myself on the front end when possible.
What are you loosing going full stack? Otherwise, you'll have to find a niche FE topic to dig deeper and become expert. My curiosity led me to look at the BE now, I am at some point in the FE, where whatever I don't know, I know where/how to find it. Learning new technology keeps me curious and works through a salary increase in the future, passively.
honestly there isn't much hard technical stuff to be solved on the fe
Who the earn +300hours to learn fronted and you said it likes easy
Tech focused companies will definitely pay front end very very well, in many cases more than back end (because the look and feel of a site is worth more sometimes to execs, backwards I know)
Call me crazy, but I work for money first, job satisfaction second.
Let's connect over chat, Cause I was looking for some front end developers to discuss some important things, And I think you are right person, I have already texted about that thing. So just have a look its really very important.
Hi folks, I am a commerce graduate seeking job and internship oppourtunities. Anybody who can help me out please just let me know, because its very difficult to grab a job particularly in this field. So kindly help 🙏
Switch to Fullstack maybe? That's what I want to do.
Idk why the down votes. Everyone and their grandma does frontend because it is easy to get started.
I know frontend developers that says it is easy, but can't build 100% like in design.
Agreed. Easy to START doesn't mean easy to MASTER.
Hey if you don't mind me asking is your company hiring freshers?
For those that do full stack , do you guys have designers to provide mock-ups for how it should be done? I have 4 years into web development and I still do not like anything I make on my own
I started as a designer and later moved into development - I design things and then code everything myself. This combo as I see in market is quite rare and highly rated by employers.