> Is that true, though? I see very few JavaScript developers with a solid background in computer science or software engineering on the job market
That's exactly my point. A huge amount of labor for developing web apps are people who have not come from CS/engineering backgrounds. They're self-taught, and a lot of them started with web technologies.
So it was really easy for those people to transition into backend development because they already knew JavaScript.
Is that true, though? I see very few JavaScript developers with a solid background in computer science or software engineering on the job market, compared to the demand these days, as more and more stuff goes to the browser or native HTML applications. Taking kids out of web design schools is too much of a gamble unless you already have a senior JS dev on the team to keep an eye on them.
But then again it might be different in places like Silicon Valley.