[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where are all the senior front end engineers?
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Ask HN: Where are all the senior front end engineers?
Anecdotally, our company has been struggling to hire senior FE
(web) engineers. I've heard from friends that their companies are
also struggling to hire senior FE engineers. A few hypotheses: *
FE engineering has gotten a bad rap over the past years ([insert
joke about web dev]) * Most companies don't have interesting FE
work (add a button?) Curious if others have had similar problems,
or if my personal observations don't properly represent the true
state of things
Author : badFEengineer
Score : 14 points
Date : 2022-07-06 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
| snapetom wrote:
| They have jobs already. I don't know if you're US-based, but our
| company is having the same issue with off shore devs.
|
| I've been banging my head for the past few weeks trying to get
| our management team to understand off shoring is by no means an
| easy solution any more. We've traditionally hired off shore with
| good success, and management thinks it's still easy. However, our
| recruiters have been fairly quiet these past few months, and the
| candidates that we're getting are a lot less experienced than
| what we want. You absolutely cannot just waltz into a developing
| country with a US job posting and expect candidates lining up.
| Everyone did that, and now we're in a situation where the
| competition is insane. Off shore costs have skyrocketed, and,
| addressing your second point, you have to have interesting work
| for them.
| devKnight wrote:
| Being an offshore dev, I can say that its hard finding people
| that are hiring, its a marketplace issue. There's a limited
| number of people with good foreign language skills. So any good
| Seniors with good English are all being scooped up as well.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Low supply of talent, low supply of companies worth working on
| their product.
|
| Usually the existing frontend is a mess and the company has no
| intention of scrapping it.
|
| Why shoot yourself in the foot with such a ball of stress?
| Current FE's are happily married.
|
| If an enticing startup came along, maybe. But in this environment
| it better be REAL enticing.
| tjchear wrote:
| Maybe try check the recruiting funnel/pipeline. It's possible
| majority of them got dropped at the initial interview stage where
| they were asked questions not relevant to their expertise, so by
| the time the funnel reaches you it's just drips.
| wetpaws wrote:
| All good FE engineers are happily employed and enjoy doing FE
| stuff. Source: am a FE engineer.
| gibbitz wrote:
| I dunno. I'm a FE dev and have been for 20 years. I'm finding
| more and more that FE jobs are webpack and dependency
| management jobs. Far from building bespoke user interfaces or
| developing new patterns. The design side of web development has
| grown boring thanks to bootstrap and bootstrap influenced
| design libraries. All the fun challenges of the early aughts
| are gone and all that's left is figuring out why library A
| doesn't work with library B. If I were just starting out, I
| would go to backend development. It seems more creative
| development is happening there than the graphical part of the
| web. Sadly, I'm only in it for the money these days.
| summertime42 wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's just FE - many of my recruiter friends have
| this problem with ANY senior developer. It's low supply and low
| turnover.
|
| Additionally, it could be your job posting not being enticing
| enough to get hits. I'm a senior FE dev and I saw some pretty bad
| job postings (hostile programming assessments, unpaid take home
| assignments, a circus of interviewing rounds). If you don't have
| your salary listed, that could be the issue too.
|
| I can't speak for everyone here, but I'll take 2nd or 3rd best in
| compensation if the interviewing process isn't a 3-ring circus.
| ie, I will actively drop out to protect my time from bad
| interview pipelines.
|
| My last two gigs were less than 2 hours of total conversation
| before a contract got signed, as an anecdote. Hell, I had one
| that was a 23 minute phonecall (it was awesome!). Some people
| just know how to hire someone after they look at a good LinkedIn
| or GitHub profile.
|
| Just my 2 cents. As a selfish plug, you could talk to freelancers
| who have the expertise you need so stuff gets done in the
| meantime. It's not ideal, but at least you'd have the help...
| samstave wrote:
| Pinterest cornered the market and has kept them in a cage without
| allowing them an UX examples or information to make their job
| better. They are slaves. #FREEpINTERESTfRONTeNDdEVS
| tmwed wrote:
| i think it's more of the second point you mentioned.
| additionally, pay seems stagnant for senior frontend positions as
| opposed to backend.
| forthwall wrote:
| Senior FE is high demand, low supply position. In a similar boat
| for hiring, but I think it helps when you are able to present
| your company as one that values FE (a good website for starters).
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Since I leveled up on React over the past couple years I've
| mulled adding some FE projects on the side but backend
| consultancy seems to dominate the demand on my time/skills.
| Backend just doesn't give me the tangible feeling of FE work.
| hancholo wrote:
| I've been tinkering with the idea of switching to FE, preferably,
| full stack second.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I qualify as a senior FE engineer but the last time I was looking
| finding open positions for that exact title was difficult. I
| don't really mind full stack (I guess it would depend on the
| backend) so I normally take those jobs as I'm more flexible to
| the company that hires me. Also I prefer smaller companies <100
| overall and <10 developer so finding overlap with a small company
| that also wants someone only focused on the frontend is hard.
| But, like I said, I don't mind full stack so it's worked out well
| for me and I get a good amount of frontend work (a lot of it
| greenfield).
|
| Also if you aren't posting a salary you might be losing people
| who gloss over the posting since FE isn't always respected/paid
| well. I think that factors into my gravitating to full stack
| work, I absolutely love FE work but finding a company that will
| let me do that and pays well AND is small has been...
| challenging.
|
| It's hard to give more advice without seeing something like a job
| posting. I will say, don't limit yourself by framework (but DO
| say what you use, if it's not greenfield). I prefer Vue but I've
| built sites/apps in Angular and I have no doubt I could pick up
| React if I needed to. A "real" senior FE developer isn't going to
| balk at any of the big 3 frameworks (or minor ones but be ready
| to explain why you picked something other than
| Angular/React/Vue).
| sacrosanct wrote:
| Blame this on the low bar to entry. HTML, CSS & JS are relatively
| easy to learn. So you have everyone applying for these jobs and
| we've reached peak front end candidates.
|
| The real trick is to find those who use that tech in new and
| interesting ways. Those who push the envelope.
| rudasn wrote:
| What? No, the real trick is to find someone who is reliable,
| honest, consistent and well rounded.
|
| Those would be 98% of your staff.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| I'm a full stack dev that's also somehow excel at react (who also
| don't mind frontend jobs at all), and also have some interviews
| for senior front end openings in recent weeks.
|
| The job title senior front end is too broad IMO. Since most of
| the time at early 2000, if we're talking about front end we'll
| usually deal with complex css, design, and ui/ux. What's worse is
| usually that skillset is not in align with react at all, since
| react is more into programming than design.
|
| IMO, it's easier (and more accurate) to search for fullstack
| nodejs programmer who also know react (or vue, etc).
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I would be considered a senior FE engineer, and I do interviewing
| at my employer. I recently interviewed an individual for a L6
| role (senior engineer) who didn't know how to listen for clicks
| on a <button>. What's going on?
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Most senior level hackers are being hired through very shortened
| interview cycles. Often a phonecall and that's it. The old school
| way of a recruiter reaching out, then a screening, then a tech
| round is falling behind.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| True story. I don't mind a few follow-ups to meet
| management/executive staff before an offer, but a company needs
| to be able to recognize my talent without a microscope. If they
| don't have someone to do that, they need to be recruiting me at
| CTO level.
| joeframbach wrote:
| I think as you grow in your career you'll tend to specialize
| rather than generalize. You get really good at a few things,
| rather than somewhat good at lots of things. The "Senior FE"
| roles are fewer but more specific. Now and then I see listings
| for "Performance Engineer", "Accessibility Engineer", and
| "Infrastructure Engineer", but on further inspection these are
| actually Senior Front End roles, but not in title.
|
| Recently I went through a generic Sr FE interview at Google
| (still waiting to find out if I've been ghosted after). There
| were 5 or 6 rounds, and I feel I totally bombed one of them,
| excelled at one, and did okay at the others. I think that's
| acceptable at this level. I went through a "Performance Engineer"
| interview loop at another company, and the rounds were all
| specific to the role. I had a much better experience in that
| interview.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| I've often gotten the impression that Google interviews more
| for general applicability to working at Google than for the
| specific role advertised. Your comment here being no exception
| -- is that your experience, is that what you mean to convey?
| joeframbach wrote:
| We're in agreement. It reflects my experience. I had to
| question the recruiter about it, "How does Google hire FE
| specialists in Accessibility for example?" and I didn't get a
| good answer. I assume they throw some fungible engineer at
| the problem and hope for the best?
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(page generated 2022-07-06 23:02 UTC)