We should retire the term Web Developers

Published On
- 3 min
Coding

The term Web Developer tells me nothing.

There was a time when the "web" was a much simpler place. You used HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and PHP to build websites with some text and some images, and that was it.

The "Web" has become so much more complex, with many different tools, platforms, and disciplines, that it's not fair to call anyone a "Web Developer" anymore, because that term tells you literally nothing other than you do something tangentially related to the internet.

Thinking off the top of my head, here's a list of different types of people that others would consider "Web Developers":

  • Creates simple static sites with HTML and CSS and knows barely if any JavaScript.
  • An HTML and CSS expert that can translate complex designs to static websites.
  • A JavaScript expert that can build complicated websites with modern tools.
  • Uses drag and drop builders, edits some CSS, but cannot write code.
  • An expert in PHP and JavaScript and creates custom Wordpress sites.
  • Someone that doesn't know much JavaScript and HTML, but they have enough framework specific knowledge to work on a React or Vue app.
  • Builds advanced tools or SDKs that other website and app developers use.
  • Creates advanced apps with JavaScript, but doesn't necessarily ever build websites.
  • Uses languages like Python or PHP and uses frameworks like Django or Laravel to create websites with backends.
  • Someone that knows the ins and outs of setting up VPSes, hosting, enough backend knowledge to put together a database connection, and hook everything up to websites.
  • Someone that uses tools like React Native, Flutter, Cordova, or Ionic Framework, and builds websites and native apps in tandem, knowing enough native code to get by.

The variation in capabilities of different people who could all be considered "web developers" is quite large.

To be clear I'm not writing about this for gatekeeping purposes. Everybody that identifies with an item in the list above is a web developer, and that's exactly the problem.

One place where lack of title specificity becomes a problem is finding a job.

Job listing might be vague or too broad, and a large number of people with various skills apply, only to find out that they aren't a good fit late in the process. At the same time, people will just shotgun apply to every job that looks even slightly related to their experiences. Companies have a difficult time sorting through the noise and finding a good fit, and people have a difficult time finding a job that fits their skills well. It's a lose-lose situation.

I also recognize that the use of super specific titles is not a silver bullet. Just because you used something like Django or React at work for a number of years doesn't mean you want to pigeonhole yourself as a "Django developer" or a "React developer" when you're capable of much more than that.

The inverse is also true. Take for example someone that is highly skilled in React, but isn't very experienced in plain JavaScript. Maybe they want to be labeled purely a "React developer" because that will help filter out roles during a job search.

There needs to be terms and titles that are indicative of skills somewhere between "I write code that's on the internet" and "I write code in this one specific tool".

I don't know what the solution is, and I don't know what the correct titles should be. What I do know is that throwing around the term "Web Developer" to describe a myriad of roles doesn't help anyone.