HACKER Q&A
📣 pplonski86

Im back end engineer, not front end – is this just excuse?


When I hear: I'm not good at frontend, I'm good at backend - I'm starting to think this is not true.

If you don't care about the user in the UI, you probably don't care about the user in the backend either. Frontend problems are just easier to see — bad UI, confusing views, ugly design. Everyone notices. Backend problems are hidden — slow API response, bad errors, hard to manage code. It takes longer to notice, but users still suffer. So maybe it's not about frontend vs backend. Maybe it is just about caring (or not caring) about the end user. Have you seen this?

  👤 OhMeadhbh Accepted Answer ✓
Just because you think you're good at UI issues doesn't mean you're good at structuring back-end APIs.
👤 re-thc
> When I hear: I'm not good at frontend, I'm good at backend - I'm starting to think this is not true.

There's no absolute true false in anything like that. Generalization is just an easy way to reduce thinking.

To take that analogy further - when you go to a specialist (doctor) and get assigned 1 are they the best 1? If you have a different problem do you have to go to a different specialist?

So it's not about you. It's about society or your company. You get a job, e.g. backend engineer. That's your "label". It doesn't actually say what you're better at -- just that you were tested for backend by company standards and got in.