Stefania in  
User Experience (UX)  

Poll

Too late to switch to frontend?

Hi! I'm a 27F US/EU citizen who has spent the last 5 years working in Europe. My role involves A/B testing websites and apps, so I do a mix of UI design, UX and analytics research, and light JS coding. Other bits include basic statistical calculations and client management.


I've decided to move back to California this year, and I'm getting major FOMO looking at front-end developer salaries versus those in digital marketing. It seems like I'll need 8+ years of experience in a management role just to break $150k in the field I'm in now.


However, my field is quite niche, so it's pretty easy to get interviews and offers. With all the recent layoffs, I'm worried that becoming a self-taught developer would put me at the bottom of the pack for several years to come? 

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anonymousPenguinzSoftware Engineer  
If you do switch, having design experience will really give you a leg up in making projects for a portfolio look good. They'd have to be pretty good projects in this market, but I think it's still doable. This coming from a self-taught engineer myself. You pretty much are like bottom of the pack, so you do have to make yourself stand out. A good looking CRUD app shows you can do frontend and know a bit of backend, which might make you look more favorable over someone with just frontend. You'll also need to know JS pretty well in my opinion.
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StefaniaUser Experience (UX)  
Yeah I definitely need to work on my depth of knowledge for JS...My current role is strictly vanilla JS, and I can use internal AI tools to write/debug just about anything. Most A/B tests are not very complex.

However, last year, I built a startup job board for my current country using Nextjs, OAuth, and Supabase as a backend. Would that count as a decent CRUD app in the current US market? 🀞🏻

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