Extending the Front-End Engineer role

This blog have been shared on Medium in a better structure and more organized thoughts, please read it over there for a better experience: https://medium.com/@KhaledElAnsari/extending-the-front-end-engineer-role-77d86100d2

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Seriously Front-End Engineers need to handle more than the client side application where they only update the UI and send AJAX requests to get data, yes some application require an experience person to handle some serious interaction like interactive games or financial apps with so many charts but still Front-End Engineers to be part of some stuff that considered ambiguous for people who should handle just because it is related to UI and they don't like dealing UI or anything close to it.

Some of what I'm going to say was part of what some companies used to call Web Engineer but anyway let's kick it to the topic.

For example:

• DevOps: FEEs need to have knowledge about what is CORS and how to allow servers to give access to their apps specially if there is an edge case like calling a proxy API.
• System Design: knows your main components in the app and start drawing them, draw how state management is handled, draw how fetching data from local cache work and so, do what others brag about and don't know how to do!
• Cloud Engineering: not sure if this is the right term but you need to know how to prepare your own container and deploy it, setup a basic CDN, setting a pipeline and storing the package in the a bucket or an FTP server or what ever, just learn some cloud development basics please.

If you don't like doing this for your own sake at least do it so they won't say you are not working!

I might make it a full post with some examples and for those who are already part of such things please share your experience.

 

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Originally published as a quick thought on my Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid031Mhur4WHnGpaCbJP9UrJnsSGPJP2B6W4s8f52VyKuVZe1KaGKPoC6Ja4uakVKsZEl&id=1296041354&mibextid=Nif5oz

The Brogrammer Phenomenon

So geeks and nerds are known to be awkward specially geeks and programmers are geeks by nature because they are mostly introverts or because they just like to enjoy some solo activities quietly like reading a book or playing video games or maybe learning a new thing for work (yes private time is for learning in this career!) and so far it is ok and fun to be in such a position where you can find fellow geeks and enjoy the nice little thing productively.

Nowadays with the rise of big companies and the way they changing the world and affecting our lives people want some of what some called it "The Revenge of The Nerds", everyone wants the big money everyone wants to be cool and hip again and everybody wants to brag about the secret life of the nerds that people are wondering how it changed the world and how it is nicer than the way that the rest of the world is living. This wave of nerd winning brought us what I like to call the "Brogrammer Phenomenon".

Now companies wants a good PR, looking good will attract customers and will create a crowd of loyally blind people that want to be part of your movement (see Google and Facebook as a clear example) and that's what the nerds did with their companies in a way that drove people to crazy preparations to be part of the nerds and this is where it all started!

People started to talk about their journey to prepare for the interview and how some of them managed to get a job without a previous experience or a degree making it look so good even though it is just an entry level job or maybe just an internship, I'm not mocking their achievement but I don't the brag here which created a wave of people who want to talk about the Utopian life that everyone should have by having such a job and focus on how eat good, look good, and spend good leveraging the PR of the work life balance and the social media trends to get more audience.

Nowadays we don't have programmers we have BROGRAMMERS! People who focus on how to look and how programmers have a different mind and life where in fact these BROGRAMMERS are just copy cats who wants attention through social media and the misery of others who are watching them and guess what? they are toxic to work with because they spend time talking about nonsense and being lame and fill everything with jargons they don't even understand to impress the naive people around.

Trust me when it comes to hard work these people would fail and their videos about cool features in VS Code or the hottest new framework won't get them anywhere so please focus on being a PROGRAMMER not a BROGRAMMER.

Note: this is a criticism to the toxic actions by everyone following the paradigm and not to be confused with the "Brogrammer Culture" in the US where people mix programming with activities like drinking and chasing women or even being sexist.

 

Update: after writing this article I stumbled upon a Reddit post for someone finding an article titled "SQL vs. CSS What’s the Difference? Which Is Better?" and guess what? The article exist! Now you can see what this phenomenon is getting us.