| Hey, thats an interesting topic for me. So my 2c: Most of ppl calling themselves "backend developers" simply overvalue themselves. Not talking about you here, so plz dont get it personal. But i spend way too much time on hiring and thats usually the case: "Hey, i am backend guy. Stuff like HTML is too stupid for my super-brain!". And when you actually start asking them what are their main achievements with back-end dev its turns out that in 99% its simply: 1) Running some bg scripts that are faily OBVIOUS, like sending emails. (Seriously many ppl think its still a rocket science backend stuff!!)
2) Connecting to existing APIs or writing own api
3) Scrapping some content, sending emails etc.
4) Re-writing some existing open source system from scratch instead of configuring existing one "just for fun"
5) Coding simple mobile apps, or some backend algorithm for web apps
5) And so on! I have tons of such stories when smart guys waste their time and keep thinking they are doing some rocket science simply because they are NOT doing front end out of principle! So in fact, no rocket-science, no achievements to value, just some sort of ego and unwilling to work on certain front end tasks(Where design!=front ent). At the same time i know many good front end guys who rock at ajax, jquerry, html etc and still able to do 98% of the same back-end stuff ! All these not to say that there no real backend Gods. There are many. These guys usually work on DBs, compilers, operation systems, low level programming for specific devices, drivers, protocols, etc. There are a lot of work and potential success for such guys! In most of other areas good hacker(at least in my company) must combine his backend skill with certain willingness to work on user interface. Otherwise its getting too expensive (esp for smaller startup) to hire another frontend guy for him, simply because backend guy is to smart(/lazy) to work with UI DISC: All above is just my experience of course. |