Are You A Front-End Back-End or Full-Stack Developer?

Having been through more rounds of interviews than I’d care to count, I think I have gained a pretty good understanding of what recruiters are looking for in a web developer. At least, a full-stack web developer. I’ve read articles and watched YouTube videos again and again arguing about how you should label yourself as a developer. I guess it’s the age-old debate or whether to specialize or generalize.

The argument I suppose is a valid one. People only have so much time in the day, so it’s easy to assume nobody’s going to try to learn how to do everything, and even if you do that tends to leave one with only a high-level understanding. Specializing enables the possibility for people to dig much deeper into the intricacies of a subject.

Maybe I’m a generalist, but I like to think I’ve specialized in several domains, even just within technology. I run my own server out of my closet, and I take full advantage of it with a half dozen virtual machines running several different websites and servers. This website that you’re reading this on right now actually lives on this server, so you can see for yourself the stack of skills I’ve obtained over the years. Does that not demonstrate that I have specialized skills within front-end and back-end both? Surely it does. Therefore, I confidently label myself as a full-stack developer.

Some would still disagree, and I can still follow this justification process. I may be told that despite having modestly advanced front-end and back-end skills, a specialist in either field would be able to accomplish a specified task much more effectively than me. If the task needed both front-end and back-end, then a team of two specialized developers could easily do it better. Sure. Both cases may be true. I know I’m not as good at front-end or design as some UI/UX experts. I don’t try to specialize here, but I do consider myself to have a much deeper level of specialized back-end skills.

Sure, the full-stack label may sell me short as a back-end dev and oversell me as a front-end dev, but I’m going to keep it in my resume. It covers more of my skillset, I do have proven skills as a full-stack dev, and any further details is what a conversation is for, right?

February 9, 2023