Programmers that have front-end web development has their main area of expertise are still programmers. The difference is in the tasks. As this person said, they do CSS/JavaScript and even step in the UI/UX expert shoes. Then even do design work.
I have a similar task description and my title is "full-stack web developer".
I simply call myself "web developer" as I consider that being able to deliver a website from A to Z is a requirement of my job. From design to back-end to hosting to SEO.
You're framing this as an internet problem, which it is not. Before the internet it was called "keeping up with the Jonses" and one can not simply uninstall their environment, whereabouts and reception of social status and class telegraphing from others.
I honestly couldn't care less and consumerism is deeply offensive to me. I often think I belong in a different time, when commercialism and consumerism wasn't such a thing. There was a time not so long ago that people took pride in saving, repairing and making do.
> There was a time not so long ago that people took pride in saving, repairing and making do.
That's a myth. Just like pretty much all of the "in the past, it was so much better because people X" constructions.
Some people feel that way now. Some people have always felt that way. But many people have always felt a pressure to compete with those around them, in whatever ways were available and socially acceptable at the time.
It's possible that if you go all the way back to before urbanisation, the people in a small farming or hunter-gatherer community would feel less of that pressure because there was simply less to compete about, and more mutual support....but I suspect that even then, people would have competed in their own ways.
In terms of the specific "there was a time" you mention...OK, yeah, there kinda was. It was the Great Depression. People "took pride" in saving, repairing, and making do because there was literally no other choice besides doing without.
Despite the various problems we suffer today, I don't think that's a good model for our society.
It's the same solution though, just don't go to the shops.
I get my groceries delivered and basically don't go to shops unless I have a specific thing I need. That's not a burden for me because I hate shopping anyway.
Not really. The internet is the primary way we receive information about a large number of people. Turn off that source and the envy must dry up. For the rest, there’s meditation.
As a lead you have to care about retention as well. People leave jobs when they feel like they are professionally stagnating (or worse, they stay), because for a software career, stagnation is death and everyone knows it. And high turnover will wreck your ability to deliver.
So, you have to strike a balance between getting stuff done and taking care of your people in terms of professional development and growth.
It's ok, most organizations fail at it. The "90% of everything is crap" rule applies to managers as well.
In that case you are going to find that you quickly lose your best devs. I'm not saying that resume building should be even within the top 5 priorities, but you will want to at least keep it in the back of your mind. It's a balancing act.
Otherwise the solution is to crunch-time people into oblivion and and quickly replace them when they burn out. Not exactly sustainable
Your job is whatever you agreed to when accepting that job.
Some companies require managers to aid in the technical development of employees, some don't. Some provide a lot of latitude in how that's done, some don't.
I'm not sure why you think that striving only to achieve business objectives could be considered to be a moral duty. Are you perhaps perhaps thinking of fiduciary duty?
If a company decides that technical development of engineers is good for retaining engineers and you as a manager refuse to do that, then no moral argument is going to help you when you get dinged in your performance review.
edit: Upon rereading the thread, I suspect that we may agree more than we disagree. My comment was directed at asknthrow's comment and I wanted to make the point (which other posters have more eloquently made in the meantime) that if technical development is part of your job as manager, you don't have a choice in the matter and your job is not just "to lead the team in the most effective direction in order to fulfil business objectives" (to quote asknthrow).
For sure. To be clear, I mean that regardless of what your bosses say you have an obligation to the people you manage. Obligations do not only run upward. (This is something bad managers often do not understand.)
NOPE. First and foremost, you work for yourself. Employers come and go. If you are sacrificing your resume to meet your employer's "business objectives", you could end up with a dead worthless skillset.
A balance has to be achieved. Obviously we can't sit around all day rewriting simple things in our pet language of the week...but employers need to understand that a good developer will not let their resume atrophy.
The days of the twenty-five year stint followed by a gold watch and a pension are over...you simply cannot put your employer's needs ahead of your own anymore.
Harsh. I've seen this happen many times and on every occasion it's been taken light-heartedly/no offence/whatever. I think you were incredibly unlucky.
Yes, these individuals turn out to be rather snobby, you could say. Not people I’d endorse as friends or business partners on a personal level, but, it’s business and it’s worth knowing how to not lose customers, even if not means coddling them.
I couldn't agree more. Everybody complains that monetizing content is really hard on the web, and then they try to triple dip the same user (subscription, ads, data).
While we're on this subject, check out Blendle. I find that they have the most interesting stuff from WaPo (and others) there anyway, but I pay per article (micropayments), and the reading experience is consistent across all outlets.
Fair question. I have, and have even cancelled before over it. But they still do quality journalism and it keeps bringing me back into the fold. Now I consider paying but using an ad blocker to be a more targeted instance of paying with my wallet.
I briefly subscribed, was astonished that the site was still covered in ads and even crashing on mobile Safari, and canceled. I had just assumed that of course a paying account would have no ads, but I guess I'm crazy!
I don't think this is correct. AFAIK they both run in the UI thread (which is why running your timer in a webworker turns out to be more accurate as only the callback is affected by queue length of scheduled calls in the UI thread). Although this article https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling is about sheduling audio specifically, it is the go-to resource for accurate web timing (and although not explicitly mentioned, the metronome is supposed to run in a webworker).
