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General Discussion

front end vs full stack techdegree

I'm trying to decide between the front end vs the full stack tech degree. Can you get a job with a front end techdegree or are employers going to be more impressed with full stack?

1 Answer

justin s.
justin s.
1,009 Points

Me, personally, favor specialization above a jack of all trades. I also look at it like this.

Who is more in demand and makes more? Who do you want operating on you if you have a bad heart, the general practitioner or the cardiologist?

So I think people are more valuable long term choosing either front end or back end but not both. People will disagree with that, but I've heard more than my fair share of stories that the companies wanting full stack will work you to the bone, with very little compensation for it for what you do.

I also know that if I was an employer, I would want THE best front end or the best backend dev I could find. I feel that someone dipping their toes in all areas never excels at any because there's so much to learn in each that it's hard to master all.

What I would say if you haven't already done so, is explore some of the front end courses here. Then one of the back end languages. For this I would recommend python (you'll find out why below). Then dip your toes into ios or android for mobile. Then UX. Dont go super deep, but just play around a little. Then after say a month take a honest assessment of what area you liked most. What area did you really catch onto? What didn't feel like a chore? Then go full bore into that. You may feel that ios is your passion. Choose the ios techdegree then. No, coding isnt for you but design and making great user experiences are. UX techdegree would be perfect that. Or no, you're not really a designer and the front end does nothing for you, but you killed it when you were dipping our toes into python. Go the python techdegree route then.