Why will you take the front-end path? What it has to offer? First of all, I can say to you this path is long, but it’s worthy!

I've been working with front-end development for some time and today I feel a great pleasure to be part of this team. But after all, what is front-end and what it has to offer?

Front-end is the area responsible for turn into code and give life to that beautiful static design — put simply, it is the dev guy who takes care of your website's/blog's/web system's interface and usability; the CSS guy.

Today we're living in the Information Age. And with a huge convergency for web apps and systems, great on-premises platforms are turning into cloud available applications.

All this change plus those new services which already are born into the web ecosystem puts the front-end developer role in evidence, leading to a huge demand for new trained developers to manage this all. A good front-end dev can make your product such an another result on Google search or make it a stand out, attractive result to your customers.

Talking from the dev perspective, beyond the projects you would be taking part on and all the networking you'll develop, the front-end universe could offer you:

1) Contact with fancy technologies

In the world of development, in general, you'll have contact with several and wonderful languages, tools and platforms (PaaS, SaaS, IaaS) whose make your job easier and more flexible.

Today it's such a mistake thinking that front-end development limits itself to HTML + CSS! The technical and knowledge level for front-end devs gets higher each day — to be a successfull dev, you must master HTML, CSS and JavaScript (only jQuery isn't enough!), have a good design sense (it's a good differential if you have some experience with graphical software), have a good knowledge about projects architecture and infrastructure, design patterns (not everything in life is a singleton)… This list gets bigger every single day…

2) Contact with a huge community

Today the web devs community (front + back) is very large and some fantastic people are inserted in those communities. Github, forums, Facebook + Telegram groups, there are several channels to knowledge's dissemination. It's very difficult to have a doubt or to find a problem which cannot be solved in a short amount time with such quality support.

3) Acknowledgment and feedback

All the development segments have acknowledgement, logically. But I believe that it's such a front-end's glamour — the people really view and interact with your stuff. The users will click the button you've coded, they will like (or not) the website layout, animations and usability — and at this point the feedback is really fast!
Any change you make will affect the user's navigation (either visual or performance stuff) and it can improve or worsen your website's or blog's conversion rate. All the actions made on the applications' visual layer (where front-end devs spent 90% of their time) will generate chain reactions that can be seen in short time slots.

4) Job Vacancies

Today it's really hard to a front-end dev find yourself without a job. There's a "we're hiring" ad at every corner — either JR, PL or SR — not mentioning the freelancer opportunities. Technology companies are investing really hard and valuing each day more this area, because if the product/service being offered is really good rated and it has a simple interface with easy assimilation to use, your visitor will become a customer in a very short time range; and that's good for everyone involved.
Particularly, every day I get about 5 to 10 job vacancies on my email, requesting trained front-end devs with a specific mastery (beyond HTML + CSS) — React, Angular, Vue, WordPress, Mobile Hybrid Apps, Mobile First… Besides those jobs you can get on websites like Freelancer and Fiverr.

Whether in a startup or in an enterprise environment the front-end dev role has great benefits and an incredible journey to offer you! To be a successful player in this field, you only need to have willpower and creativity!

P.S.: EBANX is always looking for new devs! Take a look at our carrers page and come dream big with us!

Cover photo - 8Photo by Maik Jonietz on Unsplash