So, you’ve over thought this a bit. There is a course in comp sci called ‘Software Engineering’, and it’s the place where stuff like UML diagrams and end-to-end testing get covered (differences between tests). The UI developer would need to test his/her stuff too, no? You can
engineer a good codebase for anything, not just critical applications.
The thing you are describing is something different altogether, where the distinction is more about status (e.g I do more important work than you). Usually we handle this with appropriate compensation, but if you are looking for nominal respect, that’s a losing battle. I just saw some kid on LinkedIn, graduates a bootcamp with no job experience at all, changes his title to ‘aspiring developer and data analyst’. Title pimping is a lost cause, and the integrity required to derive status from it is infinitesimally small.
Tech in general has always had this problem, as we mostly got lumped into ‘aren’t you an IT guy?’ for years. It had very little status, and we sort of have the same problem all over again except it’s the barbarian horde of newcomers that give themselves titles that would takes years to sincerely attain. Three month bootcamp straight to a ‘full-stack’ developer, huh? This stuff hurts us in general, and we might as all go back to being called ‘IT people’.
I do agree that software is too big to have a blanket term like ‘Software laborer’. There are ‘ui laborers’, ‘options trading laborers’, ‘infrastructure laborers’, ‘backend laborers’, etc. I wouldn’t want to create classism amongst laborers (you know, real laborers vs not so real laborers), but rather have descriptive branches of our field properly described so we understand what part of this field you specialize in - no status involved. I guess the same way we know what a Podiatrist does exactly, compared to an Orthodontist. There is no Medical Professional or Seriously-Better-Medical Professional.
I wouldn’t put too much weight on the term, marketing values ‘full-stack’ ahead of anything else anyways, which flys in the face of specialization. Probably why such a topic even comes up, if we’re all meant to be generalist, what sets us apart?
The thing you are describing is something different altogether, where the distinction is more about status (e.g I do more important work than you). Usually we handle this with appropriate compensation, but if you are looking for nominal respect, that’s a losing battle. I just saw some kid on LinkedIn, graduates a bootcamp with no job experience at all, changes his title to ‘aspiring developer and data analyst’. Title pimping is a lost cause, and the integrity required to derive status from it is infinitesimally small.
Tech in general has always had this problem, as we mostly got lumped into ‘aren’t you an IT guy?’ for years. It had very little status, and we sort of have the same problem all over again except it’s the barbarian horde of newcomers that give themselves titles that would takes years to sincerely attain. Three month bootcamp straight to a ‘full-stack’ developer, huh? This stuff hurts us in general, and we might as all go back to being called ‘IT people’.
I do agree that software is too big to have a blanket term like ‘Software laborer’. There are ‘ui laborers’, ‘options trading laborers’, ‘infrastructure laborers’, ‘backend laborers’, etc. I wouldn’t want to create classism amongst laborers (you know, real laborers vs not so real laborers), but rather have descriptive branches of our field properly described so we understand what part of this field you specialize in - no status involved. I guess the same way we know what a Podiatrist does exactly, compared to an Orthodontist. There is no Medical Professional or Seriously-Better-Medical Professional.
I wouldn’t put too much weight on the term, marketing values ‘full-stack’ ahead of anything else anyways, which flys in the face of specialization. Probably why such a topic even comes up, if we’re all meant to be generalist, what sets us apart?