I’ve been a frontend developer since 2011. I should have quit around maybe 2015, but only, ahem, “followed through” this year, nearly a decade later. I don’t know why I kept going (money), but it would probably help me to process this out loud on the internet. There’s been plenty of really good posts on the subject already anyway, so I’ma ride the wave.
As you may guess for someone who claims to have quit the tech industry in 2024, I was excreted by it.
A scant two years ago, it felt like my phone was ringing nonstop from recruiter calls. Now? I haven’t had a call in months. Job hunting has been hell: after jumping through all the hoops of cover letters, technical exams, and interviews, you don’t even get the kindness of a rejection email.
Withered by months of job hunting, I stare into my empty screen. Through that blotchy reflection, something that’s been in my mind’s periphery for so long came back into focus: fuck this. I’ve hated frontend development for years.
The halcyon days of ‘view source’
I was a nursing graduate, but my first job was as a frontend developer. Honestly, I really wanted to be a designer, but didn’t want to fiddle with an image editor then show mockups for someone else to build. It didn’t really feel like designing for the web to me. So: frontend. I love the web so much, man. I really just went and learned HTML/CSS/JS, lovingly stolen from everyone’s cool websites, then made a career out of it. It was such an empowering feeling. ‘View source’ being a core part of your learning felt incredible. All day I’d open up some links on a website gallery and just ‘view source’. You’d know if a website was built as a trade or a craft, as it was pretty close to the creator’s intent. Now it’s more often simply something a compiler spat out. It’s somewhat improving, but it’s more like seeing the occasional bud sprout in a razed-down forest.
It’s all JS now. Just Surrender.
I started off saying that I felt like I should have quit around 2015 or so, and would you look at that? It was the year React et al really got going.
I’ve of course (begrudgingly) learned a good amount of them, and have honestly (begrudgingly) enjoyed it at times and understand the benefits. Still, none of these frameworks’ pleasures can convince me it’s worth abandoning the core trinity of the web and letting JS take the wheel. It’s too fundamental a thing to simply pass up for me, and it just feels like prioritizing developer needs over user needs. A certain type of developer I wasn’t, anyway. I hang out with the designers more than the devs; don’t ask me about routing.
Still, I kept at it, cause the money was good, and my third-world existence couldn’t let that go. The full-stack demands of being a frontend developer kept growing and whittled away at what I loved about the work. That great love gave way to great heartbreak. I felt stretched so thin that I just came apart. Can’t I just do front-of-the-frontend?
Front-of-the-frontend, and jobless? What a surprise!!!
It’s a badge of shame at this point. The equivalent of a dunce cap or a “kick me” sign taped to your back. Saying you’re a front-of-the-frontend dev means you prefer not to work with JS, and what the hell else is the frontend nowadays but JS?
So it goes. I just want to build pretty little brochure sites, deep down (I mean, shit, even those are built in React). The equivalent of a birdhouse when everybody wants to erect skyscrapers.
Now what?
Employment doesn’t seem like the move, to be honest. I’ve sold my being to companies my whole adult life, and I don’t feel like the trades were fair. I’ve grown so cynical as to think that most forms of employment are prostitution: they’re gonna screw you one way or another. Yeah, I haven’t been okay for a good while—at least work-wise, anyway. But I digress. Perhaps a topic for another time.
If this ruins my employability, then so be it. It would keep me from abandoning everything I’ve just said if I somehow got a job offer. I can’t live that way anymore.
Here it is. Goodbye, frontend development. You were long gone as I had loved you.