Something is not right in the world of UI / Front End / Full stack Engineering ..
I got another call from an alumni's friend getting laid off as front end / full stack dev..
Just to give you numbers
We have over 340+ candidates that we have helped get jobs in the last 5 years .
6 got laid off since Jan 1
All of them are front end / full stack /react / UI /UX folks except one who is a software tester ..
None of our data , PM , BA got laid off ..
Based on several conversations I had , there might be few reasons biggest one being
Rise of platforms such as salesforce /others
When you are building or migrating to new app or platform ,
You have 2 choices,
Build a custom one which means building the entire infra from front end/ back end / devops / cloud / testing /Security/Accessibility and whole bunch of stuff etc ( You can also use low code / no code to build such as Appian ) .
Or
Use salesforce or similar cloud based platform. With few customizations , you are up and running in a few weeks, at max a few months .
Previously most of the customers' requirements were so niche that there was no choice but to build custom apps .
But newer purpose-built clouds such as marketing, insurance , finance have reduced friction ..
Whatever you need, there is a cloud for that .
Plus I know
From my experience, most of the custom stuff that is built by non tech companies works like crap. I was one of those non tech engineers building software, I will never use what I build :) .
But even platforms like salesforce cannot provide full functionality for every business.
What they have are escape hatches to include any third party / custom functionality to include your own versions. If you are still missing the functionality there are thousands of apps on AppStore /Google Cloud / Salesforce appexchange
Role of UI / UX has changed , they now should learn to work on integrations and making different systems talk to each other . Insteading of building from ground up , they need fill in for missing functionality
Finally, there is still huge demand for UI engineers but companies need candidates who are exceptional
For example , Can you build functionality like Canva . Even canva founders waited few years to find talent that can pull of that kind of engineering feat.
In short , companies need UI talent that will obliterate the need of UI Engineers. Hmm ..Kind of shooting youself in foot.
Written by
Sachin Rajgire