A brief discussion on career planning for front-end newcomers

It has been a while since I got an offer from Taobao. With personal guidance from Xihu, Baitao, D2, internships, and front-end experts, a better life is waving to me. It was originally decided to report on December 7th, but due to some force majeure, the schedule has changed (in fact, whether I can work on Taobao is still uncertain). During this anxious waiting process, I would like to calm down and sort out my many recent thoughts on career planning. I hope it can be helpful to front-end newbies like me.

During the first Taobao meeting, a large part of the conversation with Yizhou was related to his career plan. During the second meeting, he also talked a lot with Xiao Ma about the future of the front-end. Later, I tried Google Wave, and on a whim, I asked the question " Is it necessary to make refactoring a separate profession ?" I admit that this problem is very difficult to deal with, especially for those in the "refactoring community". It’s really funny when I think about it. I was really too petty. I was still glad that Tencent had a special position for page reconstruction (because my programming foundation was very poor and I only knew CSS). After being despised by them, I realized that this position actually has a lot of potential. Learning, on the contrary, began to doubt its necessity. But this is not the point. The point is that in the process of doubt, I have a more rational and systematic understanding of how to develop in the front-end field.

Where do new front-end people come from?

I think compared to other technical positions, front-end is the IT position that is least likely to be kicked out. I noticed that many "page reconstructors", "front-end development engineers", etc. recruited by the school are non-computer-related majors (like me, wood science... bullshit~). This is of course because the Internet industry is attractive and the starting point for entry into HTML and CSS is low. In college, everyone can still take C (Computer Level 2) test. Why can’t everyone make web pages? Moreover, because of the intersection of positions, many front-end personnel are destined to change careers:

1. Designers switch to front-end <br /> This is the most common. "Artists" in small companies still do this kind of work - drawing (Photoshop) -> cutting (HTML/CSS). I also started on the road of front-end because I helped my sister (designer + code blind) cut pictures. An advantage of being a front-end designer is that you can better grasp the key points of the design draft, and can easily resolve the non-standard operations of some visual designers. The disadvantages are also obvious, including the lack of mathematical foundation, the code written is not rigorous enough, and the JavaScript foundation is generally poor, making it impossible to do real "front-end development".
2. Back-end programmer transfers to front-end
   Taobao's first front-end engineer himself wrote Java. This year, a classmate in the school recruitment was pushed to the front-end and was admitted (wow, complicated Chinese sentences). Another reason why there are many non-computer majors on the front end is that computer science students "disdain" to engage in front-end work. You said you have studied computer science for four years, but then you end up cutting pictures and writing CSS. Isn't it embarrassing? Therefore, those who move from the backend to the frontend generally want to engage in so-called Web Apps, Web applications based on Ajax and various complex architectures. This technical direction is actually the general trend of the front-end (discussed below).
3. Networm to front-end
   Nowadays, many children like to surf the Internet, and playing games all the time is boring. So if they want to learn something related to the Internet, the first choice is naturally the front-end! (Because it’s simple.) Those born in the 1990s who are interested in doing this have all become all-rounders: they can play with Photoshop, CSS, and PHP... Several Twitter celebrities, including the author of Bottle Mouth, are typical examples of them. ... As a "heavy Internet user", one of the major advantages is that he has an intuitive understanding of the structure and interaction requirements of web pages, understands what netizens need, and the programs he writes are often more usable. Of course, ease of use depends on the so-called "interaction designer", but isn't interaction design also a part of the front-end?

In addition, there are many webmasters who have grown up in practice and still have certain "front-end accomplishments." Maybe they just wanted to build a few websites for fun at first, and learned some front-end technologies in the process of building websites. Some people specialize in the front-end, while others continue to do repetitive tasks or sit on their hands. This is off topic and not meant to be stated.