I agree with cimmanom. Alot of it is definitely subconscious.I would say it doesn't matter, but I can think of many times where I saw a resume and completely dismissed the person because I couldn't quickly understand where the important information was.
When I am reading through hundreds of resumes, I really just want to see the important information about someone's work history quickly to make a decision whether to add them to the pile or not.
At my org we call them "Opportunity Engineers". We do this to position them mentally that their job is to create new opportunities with every client. This means that they have to use whatever technology they want to solve the clients requests as simple as possible. They are still umbrella'd under the Engineering department and attend the same standups and meetings as all the other engineers. They work closely with our engineering leads to make sure their solutions won't cause a disconnect in our grander technology stack. Often times the solutions they prototype for a client end up becoming a longer term solution that we try and market to others. So when that happens they are brought back into the Engineering team and lead the effort in building that solution into a full product.
We also make sure it is as seamless as possible if someone wants to transfer internally. Our Engineering department is relatively flat, in that Team Leads are more of Project Leads and will shift from engineer to lead from project to project. And engineers are encouraged to join whatever projects they find fascinating
I think alot of it comes down to the fact that the internet, and frontend-development (web development mostly) is relatively new. And as with anything new, the community is just trying everything they can to make it work until something eventually sticks.
As someone who has done this for a while, I remember how difficult it was to try and build a UI using flash, then later with just html and jQuery, and now with modern libraries like React. So while it seems like every year there is a new "better" way to do something, but that is mostly because is is getting better and easier over time.
I would say it is unfair to categorize software engineers as "always focus(ing) on salary and early retirement". It is true that in all fields, especially ones that pay well, there is always people who are in it for the money, and they want to get out as fast as they can. But there are plenty, and I would argue a significant majority, who do it because they love and enjoy it. You have to be careful when judging any field by the vocal minority because it is often just that, a very vocal minority.
I really enjoy writing code every day. I do it less now that I lead a team, but want to do coding of some sort until I die. My only motivation to make more money, is to eventually afford me the freedom to do coding for me.
But as for the terms of hire-ability, in my opinion, it is more important to understand the core concepts of programming independent of a technology or language. But as for trying to get hired, there are jobs out there for nearly every language/stack you can think of. So you could just start looking around your area and finding something that is popular with companies in the area.
I can't speak too much about the freelance market, but i can say as someone who is currently trying to hire a UI/UX designer ;) (https://www.pairin.com/careers/) One thing i am always looking for in a designer, especially UI, is their ability to prototype a complicated idea.
Since so much more of "Great" design no days involves things like motion and animation, it is great to see a designer who can mock something up with some motion. And that can be with either code or with some sort of animation software. It is really hard for most people to get a sense for motion without seeing the motion.
There should never be a need for a designer to be as efficient as a front-end developer when coding, or you should just hire a front-end developer.
On the note of:
> data analysis for research or MVP building
Being able to take complex data and show it in a meaningful and understandable way, is a much more valuable skill (in my opinion) for a UI/UX designer to have than the ability to write some code.
Rather tell you how many developers i think you need before you should switch to microservices i will instead tell you about my team and why we use microservices.
I am currently leading a team of 7 (including myself) and we currently operate a Monolith Rails application with several small to medium microservices.
Our philosophy is essentially, is what we need part of the core functionality of our application, and does it rely on other core functionality. If so then it goes in the monolith. But if it is independent of the other core features then we build it as a standalone service.
We started moving to microservices ~2 years ago when our team was only 2 (me and 1 other). It was much more difficult to maintain at the time, but the flexibility in being able to rewrite certain things when necessary was greatly beneficial. Things like automating our build and great documentation for how things interconnect has alleviated alot of the trouble we had running our microservices.
Thanks for sharing! I like your approach. I've often seen the 'do everything as a microservice' idea get tossed around. I get the feeling that your approach is pragmatic.
PAIRIN | Full-Time | Senior Full Stack (Rails), Mid Level Frontend (ReactJS) | Denver, CO ONSITE | https://www.pairin.com/careers
We are looking for a talented, enthusiastic, an experienced Developers to join our engineering team. You will be working with our technology team to continue to expand our modular React front end applications, supported by a decentralized Rails platform.
You will also be working in a team oriented environment, collaborating with both business and engineering.
PAIRIN is a social enterprise company whose mission is to make education relevant and hiring equitable. The PAIRIN team believes that by providing the right data, tools, and resources, we can remove the barriers that prevent people and organizations from reaching their maximum potential.
