A bit about me
Stop. This article is not really, really, about me but about Front End Web Developers as a profession and the need to hire them today in the “back-end” era. What I wanted to underline in this article, short enough I hope to make you read it from A to Z but still long to have a good talk here, is that Front End Developers represents a strong asset for every web development business and can bring big bucks into the company’s pockets.
What bring me the idea of this article is that for too many times, when looking over the jobs board I see a long list of job requirements for front end jobs, more of them from back-end area, a kind of all-in-one salad (the title is “Hiring Front End Developers but they are asking for PHP, .NET, mySql and other server’s technologies skills).
Well, I don’t have nothing against an employee asking for all of this skills to fit one candidate (sadly they will ask for all of these at almost every job posting) but let’s make a little bit of separation between front end and back end, let’s put a stop to “one man orchestra” and see these things into their real light. If you are that lucky employee who has that kind of web developer doing front end and back end coding without no problem then you probably should pay 100k per year for your man. But why I have the feeling that you’re not?
OK with that, but what is really doing a front end developer. Just let me take a deep breath of “fresh” air coming from my computer’s fans… and let me start with the obvious of all – this job is strong related to the web UI (user interface). This means everything you see when you open a web page is the work of the front end web developer, all those design elements translated into web pages represents the bread and the water of the everyday front end development: the general style of the page, drop-down menus, the nice arrangement of text and images on pages, all this final design and architecture of a website is done by a front end web developer, or it should be.
On the other hand, the back end developer, simply saying, should create the functionality of a website and facilitate the connections between the UI and database so if the users will type something or will interact in any way with a web page what they do will have an effect or will be saved into a database.
If we look into detail a front end developer is keeping count of:
- transforming of PSD to HTML web pages helping on the way with CSS and JQuery
- coding emails newsletters from PSDs, PDFs or other finalized designs (usually coming from web designers or graphic designers)
- improving the user experience with Web Usability standards
- helping the SEO consultant (if any) on on-site optimization for Google Search – web pages speed, clean code, keeping count of the keywords, meta tags, headers, page titles, etc
- helping the copywriter in writing and adding of the page content
- helping the web designer and giving leads over images size, placement on page, choosing the right ones, etc
- consulting with the project manager about the project, taking the specifications and transforming them into a nice looking website
…and many more.
As I said at the beginning I’m not gonna get granular with this. What I wanted to say, if not clear enough already, is that there is too much information to be handled by a single man, a back end developer. Here is where the front end developer is coming in place and bring its contribution to the company, shortening the web development process and making the website to look good, to load fast and make a good impression anytime an user is opening a page.
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