I keep noticing those of us in the frontend field being treated much the same as nurses, paralegals, and executive assistants. Our work is seen as important, certainly, but just not the same as, or as important as, the “real” work.

An interesting read. Of course just an personal opinion as the author said, but I think he is correct in lots of his points.

I noticed that I think / feel like this myself sometimes, even while I’m a frontend dev myself.

Fortunately I’m in a nice team that values my frontend skills that all the other full stack/ Backend devs are missing.

Did you notice this bias / devaluing of the frontend work yourself?

  • @RonSijm@programming.dev
    2•3 months ago

    Backend: There is a problem.

    @ChatGPT: Can you turn the above sentence into 2 full paragraphs?

    Frontend:

    There’s a trend I’ve noticed—or at least, I think I’ve noticed. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to be sure of; the kind that might genuinely be true, or might simply appear to be true if you look at it a certain way. I can’t tell if I’m right, or if the shapes I’m envisioning in arbitrary ink blots say more about me than they do about what I’m observing. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s all subjective gray area and I’m just picking a spot to draw a line. I guess you can decide for yourself.

    I feel like I’m seeing a widespread diminishment of the practice of frontend. Nearly everywhere I look, I notice its importance minimized, and its challenges trivialized. This effect might be invisible to you right now. And thus, you might be reflexively inclined to say it doesn’t exist. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I just need to step away from my little screens in my little basement office a little more often. Or, maybe it’s just like any other implicit bias; maybe it seems like it doesn’t exist because it feels so ordinary until you know what to look for. So: let’s talk about what I see. Maybe you’ll see it, too.

    What convoluted nonsense am I even reading here