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Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

> We had backend devs doing frontend development with jQuery when we were using Vue.

I believe you, but I have so many questions. Where the devs prevented from chatting with each other before starting to hammer on the keyboard? Were the backend devs not curious when they had to import a new dependency (jquery in this case)? Who did the code review?

Having a backend dev do frontend is not different from a junior employee starting at the company. People have to support them, with advice, tips and reviews. Did the company failed at regular onboarding this bad too?

Honestly the whole thing sounds like malicious compliance. People didn't want to do a thing and they made sure it will be done badly.

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Having worked on both sides of the divide, I can say it's sadly common for back-end devs to underestimate the complexity of front-end development and discount the advice and opinions of their front-end colleagues. I've even seen scenarios where back-end devs were allowed to dictate standards to their front-end peers just because they had more seniority in the company.

I just had the same in the opposite direction (to an extreme degree, hand waving away an enormous amount of complexity). The blade of Dunning Kruger cuts both ways.

Though what you describe sounds awful too. Hopefully with the recent era of tooling and discipline on the frontend side, we'll see less of that.

Yes, that kind of arrogance can definitely come from the front-end side as well. I've just noticed a pattern with a certain type of back-end developer. Similar to the old XKCD physicist comic, there is a personality type that seems to think they can spitball an ad hoc solution to a problem that is better than the work of specialists in the field.

Sounds like a very hostile environment. In my team we learn from each other and have fun doing so.

Some times managers do things to shake things up a bit. Some times they are right, some times they are wrong just like ordinary humans.

But what it takes to ruin the environment is not always a poor manager but just one stubborn grumpy senior dev who refuses to comply, and get some people along with him.

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