I realized that there is a "full-stack developer trap": your work is evaluated
based on your best skill, which unfulfillable expectations.
18 replies
So a better description would be "full-stack literate".
And having you makes it easy to add more and more projects / features. Because
you can do it. But be aware of your limitations.
This will help your team to commit to finding a replacement for you from the
start of a project.
I know this sounds contradictive to the term full-stack developer, but I've
never met one that truly excels in and loves both disciplines.
Make clear for which of the many roles you hold, you expect to be replaced and
how quickly and what you want to keep doing forever.
Because they are so fundamentally different, and keeping up with technical
developments on both ends is nearly impossible.
As a full-stack developer your are sought after in early stage startups, small
teams because you can deliver everything they need as one.
It's now really hard to explain that to your team. Here is what you can do: make
your skill distribution explicit when working in that role.
And after that it gets hard, and there needs to be designers, ux/ui experts. And
I know that, but at this point it's actually too late.
And I maneuver myself into this trap by using frameworks like Bootstrap. They
enable me to have great looking components, without designing.
And they will implicitly expect my frontend work results to be equally
sophisticated as my backend work.
For a non-technical founder, though, they do not distinguish between backend and
frontend work.
And this is where it gets tricky: If I'm confrontend with a backend task, I can
always go further and provide excellent solutions.
But going beyond that, we are looking at UX and in the end design. Going from
Bootstrap to the next level, is something I can't do.
Because I know how everything works together it's easy for me to use frontend
frameworks to build production quality frontend components.
I'd say I know frontend technologies VERY well. And that gets me very far.
I started my careers as a frontend developer and have been building frontends
throughout my various types of employment.
I would consider myself to be a full-stack developer, but my strength is
building backend systems for complex processes.