

Clarifying the 5+ Roles of a “Front-End Web Developer” - wclittle
http://wclittle.com/post/105888078351/clarifying-the-5-plus-roles-of-a-front-end-web-developer

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etjossem
It bears mentioning that the "Designer" and/or "Front End Developer" in a
small startup team will usually end up wearing several of these hats.

Larger teams can afford the level of specialization described here, but a
smaller company (or a small internal team) may have a technical front-end
developer who produces prototypes and live code, plus a non-technical designer
who does everything else on the design side. If it's a really tiny team, there
might be a single person who rapidly produces mockups and scripts for
usability tests, then turns around a few days later and starts writing
HTML/CSS/JS based on their findings.

I wish there were a better word than "unicorn" for people with a wider band of
responsibilities. "Full-stack UX" sounds a bit silly too.

~~~
sanderjd
Also, in that same startup, the same person writing the HTML, CSS, and JS is
very likely also writing the server communication and building the production
infrastructure, making the entire "front-end" distinction rather moot.
Honestly, even in larger companies, the front-end/back-end specialization
makes little sense to me. If you can write a good front-end javascript
application, it's very likely you can write a good back-end in pretty much any
stack.

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steven777400
I like the separation between design and development (also mentioned by
atomicfiredoll). I'm decent at implementation but have zero design skills. I
realize that a lot of companies don't have the budget to have separate
designers and developers, but it does limit the talent pool to require both in
one person.

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atomicfiredoll
It may be a bit out of date (and sparse in places,) but I've always pointed
those who seem confused to this article from CSS Tricks:

[http://css-tricks.com/job-titles-in-the-web-industry/](http://css-
tricks.com/job-titles-in-the-web-industry/)

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bzalasky
The UI Designer role described in this article should ideally be able to cover
everything in the UI Developer role. The JavaScript Developer role should also
be able to cover that role. I agree with the rest of the whittling down.

However, saying that someone who specializes in JavaScript is essentially the
same as a back-end developer is inaccurate. The types of problems an
experienced JavaScript developer deals with on a regular basis are
fundamentally different than those that a back-end only developer deals with
(not trying to imply that there isn't overlap).

~~~
bzalasky
All that said, I think there is more room for the UI Developer role in a
company that does lots of client work on a frequent basis (this person might
work on 5-10 new projects each month), not so much in a startup or web
application shop (4 months to a year in between projects/redesigns with a
small amount of template and style work required for features after the
initial work is completed). No hard evidence beyond my own experience to
support this reasoning, but thought it was worth adding to my above points.

~~~
wclittle
Cool. Agreed.

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drinchev
I was wondering are there any companies at all that follow such
differentiation between the job offerings?

I consider myself "Front-end developer". Actually I've been working and
marketing what I"m doing with those 2-3 words for the last 10 years and I had
been hired on a couple of jobs using this as a s a job title.

I don't think I'm a designer, though.

~~~
etjossem
I've typically seen teams that look like this: Designer, Front-End (or "UI",
or JS) Developer, and Back-End (or Python, or Ruby, etc.) Developer.

Designer is responsible for all UX tasks that don't involve writing lots of
code, Front-Ender writes all client-side code "above the API." API code,
devops, and DB admin falls to the server-side engineer. You might create a
separate mobile role too, if you're working on a mobile client. If one of
these roles gets contracted out, it's usually the designer or the mobile dev.

Then again, I'm most familiar with small teams. You see more specialization at
larger firms.

~~~
drinchev
Yes. I always thought it is like this.

As a front-end developer :

I've been doing JSPs, but I've rarely modified .java files.

I've been doing JS, but I would not be confident in pushing commits to the
server-side code of a NodeJS project.

I've been doing REST API calls, but it would be hard for me to change database
queries.

etc.

That's what I think I'm best at. ( You know as every developer it's not a big
deal to dig into any problem, but professionals usually rely on experience ).

