Reasons for Transitioning from Frontend to Backend Development

One year of professional experience in front-end development is leading me to transition towards backend development. Here, I will share the reasoning, inspiration, and frustrations behind this shift.

I had a job as a front-end developer. I worked there for about a year. But recently I have been thinking of leaving front-end development for good. But why? Well, here I am going to describe my thought process.

Disclaimer: Please, don’t take my words as advice or motivational speech. Rather, I am talking with myself here.

Let’s break it down to some primary questions first:

  1. Why do I want to leave frontend development?

  2. Why do I want to go full-time backend development?

  3. Wouldn’t it be more practical to manage a decent job with my 1-year job experience in frontend dev positions?

Why do I want to leave frontend development?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with front-end development. It is awesome, cool, and most importantly, it’s the first thing the user interacts with. So, there are a lot of responsibilities bestowed upon a frontend developer for smooth user experience and success of a business.

I greatly enjoyed writing frontend code, especially in React.js and Vanilla JS. Kudos to JavaScript! It provided me with my bread and butter! But what I didn’t enjoy was CSS. Why?

I spent countless hours learning CSS. I finished Mosh Hamedani’s HTML and CSS course. Finished Dave Gray’s HTML, and CSS course from YouTube. And I don’t know, maybe a hundred hours of other small to medium videos on YouTube. Read articles from css-tricks and whatnot. I used mostly tailwind. But for several project purposes, I have used Material UI, Bootstrap, and some other packages.

There’s a saying you can’t force a fish to fly! You can’t force Beethoven to be Picasso.

I think the same goes for me. I am not saying that I am Beethoven or Picasso. But I think I lack a basic natural sense of UI and UX!

Once Linus Torvalds said,

There are people who care about the user interface (UI); I can't do UI to save my life. I mean if I was stranded on an island and the only way to get off that island was to make a pretty UI, I'd die there.

I felt that line to the core of my heart.

Yes, I enjoy React, Redux, RTK query, JavaScript, TypeScript etc. Anything that the user doesn’t see. Whenever it comes to the case of UI and UX, I am just a noobie forever.

Some other things, in my experience, especially in Bangladesh, there’s no proper project planning for a project in most cases. Mainly because of a lack of budget. As a result, the client keeps changing their UI expectations. Which is a nightmare for front-end developers.

And some silly things: The PM is not happy with frontend developers, and the client is not happy either as always. The only happy person is the QA guy! And most of the blame is on front-end developers! Ughh!

I want to run away from these!

Why do I want to go to full-time backend development?

There are hundreds of reasons!

First of all, I love terminal.

I try to spend as much time as possible in the terminal. I have installed WSL on my Windows laptop, and I spend a significant amount of time reading the man page, Reddit discussions, and chatGPT or Claude.ai. Nowadays I don’t open the File Explorer except when I watch movies or series. Even while opening File Explorer I type in the command line:

$ explorer.exe .

My love for the terminal increased significantly when I started the course Bash and Relational Database from freeCodeCamp. It’s the best out there.

Secondly, I love the WHY and HOW.

I enjoy learning Node.js to its core. By core, I mean how every bits and bytes travel(some networking stuff). How the V8 engine works. How it understands JS. Why streams are far better than writing using only Buffer and fs module. Why streams are used almost everywhere. How HTTP works and why it is important. I am learning all this stuff from Joseph Heidari’s Course Understanding Node.js: Core Concepts. It’s an amazing course. I have never seen any dude go this deep on the whole internet! There’s a project that focuses on building our version of Express.js, about which I am most excited. I love these types of content.

I enjoy learning different authentication models. Such as JWT, SSO(Single Sign On), Token-based authentication, Session-Based Authentication, Basic Authentications, etc. I intend to explore more about different hashing algorithms like MD5, SHA, etc.

Nowadays whenever I get overwhelmed by the Node.js course, I jump on another course by the great Hussein Nasser, Fundamental of Backend Engineering. This course is just astounding! Learning backend concepts every day that I had no idea existed before! But I go very slowly with this one. Because most of the topics go over my head. I need time to digest what I eat. After all, I am just an ordinary human being.

Thirdly, I love Coding Challenges.

Hat’s off to John Cricket. He made an amazing list of projects. When I just started coding for the first time back in December of 2021 or January of 2022, I always wondered how the terminal worked, how all the commands ran, how vs code worked, and all the things I see on my laptop screen. But never thought these could be actual projects that I could show in my portfolio. John Cricket changed my mind. These challenges have greatly increased my interest in learning the fundamentals of Node.js as thoroughly as possible.

In most cases, I don’t understand most of the discussions. Everything goes over my head. It feels like they are saying something very important, but I am not getting it. But it doesn’t make me depressed like front-end stuff does. It only increases my thirst for learning more. I am planning on enrolling in a System Design course from Poridhi.io in the upcoming January.

These are some of the key inspirations driving my transition towards backend development. There might be mistakes in my thought process. I would highly appreciate any suggestions.

Wouldn’t it be more practical to secure a stable job with my one year of experience in front-end development roles?

Yes, it is practical. In fact, I am getting some offers in front-end development positions from some of my ex-colleagues and friends. Lots of love to them. They are, no doubt, my well-wishers.

But getting a job in a front-end role again, for one or more years is not something I dream of. It won’t make me content no matter how high the salary range is.

I consider myself a significant risk-taker. I've made many bold decisions in life, but they were always calculated risks—more like Poker than Russian roulette. In most cases, I've either won or broken even.

So, I’m ready to play poker with my career once again. Let’s see if I can draw a Royal Flush—or even two pairs would suffice. After all, poker isn't just about one hand.

NB: I will start applying for backend/full-stack roles probably within one or 1.5 months.