Recently, I stumbled across this post about what the author thought was the “realities” of a career in web development.
In a sense, I admire the author for writing something like this, currently there is a huge influx of young, “green” web developers coming into the industry, and as such, we need to make sure they are ready for what comes with being a modern web developer.
However, in saying that, the author seems more interested in teaching us that true experience, comes from years logged against a certain framework or language. And while I agree that in the current climate of web development, we need to be aware of the evolution of the web, it is naive to base an experience argument based upon buzzwords and current trends.
All too often, whenever I read articles about web development, they always seem to have an air of “oh, well if you are not working in technology X, then you aren’t doing REAL web development”, where X is the current trendy framework or language. It was only a few years ago that I remember X being Ruby on Rails, then suddenly, Javascript and NodeJS developers are looking down their noses at us, and now, my gut feels that ReactJS is slowly moving into the “top-dog” position.
Experience as a web developer is not about how many times you have rewritten your personal blog to make sure it’s just as hip and trendy as everyone else’s, experience is having the experience and wisdom to know when maybe using WordPress or Github/Jekyll to host a blog is a more stable solution than building your own. Experience comes from having been in the trenches long enough to provide sound technical advice and solutions to your team and/or client. Experience is language/framework agnostic.
The author then goes on to talk about how “Everyone starts at the bottom” as literally the next sub-heading. If everyone starts at the bottom, then doesn’t it make sense to accept that not every applicant has worked in your companies specific stack before? If everyone starts at the bottom then all hires will require some level of on-boarding and training. To me, it seems counter-intuitive to exclude an entire section of employable developers, most of which are probably experienced enough to have their on-boarding period that you are so convinced they need be significantly shorter than someone who’s entire development experience is 12 weeks in whatever is trendy at the time.
I’m not saying that code bootcamps are bad, nor am I saying that the current trends are bad. All I ask is that people re-evaluate their stance on what makes a good, modern web developer.
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