Re:Calling All Engineers (Twilio is Hiring)
by drgath on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @09:12PM
(#1573357)
"Front-end Developer" or "FE Engineer" are pretty standard titles these days. It essentially means you deal with the whole web stack (from Apache on up to CSS/JS) on servers that talk to a backend API. Your code typically won't deal with accessing databases directly or creating APIs.
Don't think of FE vs BE as HTML/CSS/JS vs server-side code. It is API client vs API server code. Architecturally, these stacks tend to be completely separate.
I'm having a bit of a time wrapping my head around this particular job title, is the ideal applicant a front-end developer or a web software engineer? The description is heavily in favor of the latter, and makes a passing reference to abilities in creating user interfaces.
While on the one hand, I understand the financial merits of wanting a staff member to maximize their contributions by wanting a front-end developer who can also double as a back-end developer, but at the very least shouldn't the job requirements be just as balanced? Or just go ahead and hire a person to focus on user interface and ensuring the integrity of effective user engagement, and having someone "build libraries"?
Maybe I missed the memo why this is such a popular trend.