00:49Hey, good to see you.
00:50Thanks for coming.
00:51This is another episode of Wireframe, and today I’m going
00:54to be talking about job postings.
00:57Now, I wasn’t going to talk about this and I didn’t plan on talking about it.
01:00I had some other things lined up, but I happen to have been browsing
01:03around LinkedIn, and in that, you know, you see these cards that
01:08have the job postings in there, and definitely going to take a look, right?
01:11So, I’m popping in there, I’m looking, and I see this job posting,
01:16And it’s for a high level, front end engineering role at a company.
01:21I’m not gonna put the company’s name out there, because I’m about to put
01:24them on blast for a couple of reasons.
01:27By the way, because I’m a little fired up there’s definitely gonna be some
01:30explicit language in here, so hide your kids, hide your wife put those
01:33headphones on I might be cursing out here.
01:35But here’s the situation, right?
01:37I’m reading this job posting.
01:40Okay.
01:40And I’m, I already have a feeling.
01:42I know what’s coming just from my experience with the company previously.
01:46And what I’m about to read in terms of job titles, so I’m reading this thing
01:51and it’s it, this job posting is huge.
01:53They’re, they’re expecting all this stuff and granted it’s a high level role, right?
01:57We’re talking, you know, staff level principal, that kind of thing over here.
02:00Right.
02:00So I’m reading this thing and going down.
02:02I’m so okay.
02:02Yep.
02:03Yes, that’s fine.
02:04Or whatever.
02:05And again, in that job title right there, the role, it says the word front end.
02:09Okay.
02:10. So I’m expecting Something to talk about.
02:14Frontend related technologies overall, you know, those kinds of expectations.
02:18So in the qualifications, alright, it’s at the top of the qualifications.
02:23I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this verbatim, so you can go ahead and
02:25just find it yourself if you want.
02:27Here is the bullet point that, that, you know, started me saying,
02:31oh, okay, maybe this is good.
02:33So it says strong systems architecture skills and experience working
02:38with multiple interconnected systems and their UIs at scale.
02:43Okay.
02:44Keywords here, UIs, user interfaces, right?
02:47So you need to be an expert in user interfaces, right?
02:50It’s the second bullet point.
02:51It’s that second bullet point right there.
02:53Okay.
02:54Now the next section talks about the technologies they’re going to use.
02:58Okay.
02:59I’m going to read off all of the technologies.
03:02Okay.
03:02And just pay attention and see if there’s anything that’s strange.
03:09Alright, here we go.
03:10We got React slash JavaScript, TypeScript, Vue.
03:15js, Ruby on Rails, Go, Kotlin, GraphQL, Kafka, MySQL, AWS, Git,
03:23Elasticsearch, Docker, CircleCI, Datadog.
03:29That’s it.
03:31Those are the technologies.
03:35Clearly, when you think about front end, especially when you
03:39mention that UI piece, is there something that’s missing in there?
03:43Yeah.
03:45HTML and CSS.
03:47It’s missing.
03:48100 percent missing.
03:50No regard for the expertise That many of us in the field have in
03:57that mentioned here at all, right?
03:59Now, maybe that’s like table stakes, right?
04:01Because again, the high level engineer kind of situation here.
04:04And certainly in terms of the system level stuff they’re looking for.
04:07Yeah.
04:07Okay.
04:08You’re going to be doing a lot of interconnection systems,
04:09but that UI piece, the top of the bullet points, right?
04:12Like I said, it’s the second bullet point.
04:13First one’s talking about years of experience.
04:15So where is it?
04:18And this is something we’re seeing over and over and over again.
04:23In our job postings out there about these roles, right?
04:27Now, this particular company, I’m going to tell you a story about that because
04:29years and years ago, I was looking for my next gig after my first one.
04:36So I got hired into a startup and I was having a good time in there, learning
04:40all this stuff, you know, being a part of a small team and just you
04:44know, shipping features and exploring all that stuff was really great.
04:49But You know, you want to grow, right?
04:51You want to go to the next thing.
04:52So this company, I, I was I don’t know if there was a recruiter that
04:55talked to me or if I talked to them initially, who initiated, but eventually
05:00I was going in for a, front end.
05:02Engineer role.
05:04Okay.
05:04It said, blah, blah, blah, front end, you know, engineer.
05:09It’s like, that’s me.
05:09I, you know, I, granted I wasn’t in the world long enough to really have, you
05:15know, the nuanced opinion I have now about it, but I knew what front end engineering
05:19was, that’s definitely what I was doing.
05:21HTML, CSS, JavaScript, you know, everything browser based
05:25that’s the front end, right?
05:27So talking with the in house recruiter for them, and in that conversation,
05:32you know, she mentioned that, Yeah, it’s a front end role, but
05:36everyone’s kind of full stack here.
05:39I said, okay, well, you know, I have some experience with, like, PHP and
05:44MySQL, But not enough for me to feel comfortable with any of that stuff.
05:48So, like, you know, if it’s gonna be like the on the job kind of learning
05:52scenario, Okay, maybe I could play around.
05:55So anyway, I do the phone screen with this company and It’s a
06:02front end focused phone screen.
06:04There’s you know, some algo question or whatever I don’t even remember these
06:06questions honestly But you know then we get to start the talking at the end of
06:10the interview and this person again Tells me, Hey, yeah, you know, it’s a, it’s
06:14a front end role, but it’s a full stack kind of, you know, thing for everybody.
06:17I said, okay, that’s interesting.
06:20I mean, it’s the second time I’ve heard that now.
06:23So I ended up going, you know, for their onsite after that.
06:26So it’s the usual, like, you know, gauntlet of five interviews, lots
06:30of different people that you’re gonna be talking to and in the
06:32morning was actually really good.
06:33Like I spoke with, I guess, I guess it was one of the hiring managers.
06:37I had another technical interview that was front and focused.
06:39Although that was good.
06:40Have a lunch and I come on back.
06:42I’m sitting in the room and these two engineers come in and they start saying,
06:49all right, so the task for now is we’re going to talk about how we might
06:53architect a set of database tables.
06:57I’m like, oh, okay.
07:01So, I tell him up front, I said, look, this is not what I do.
07:05Just letting you know, straight up, you know, this is, I was understanding
07:09this as a front end role, right?
07:10I know everybody’s full stack here.
07:12I keep hearing that I’m a front end person.
07:15I, my expertise is in the front end.
07:17So if you want me to come up here and fix your front end
07:20that’s what you’re hiring to do.
07:22You’re not, you know, a full stack person.
07:24If you want a full stack person that doesn’t have my expertise then that
07:28should have been the role, not this one.
07:30So that’s how I’m feeling about that time.
07:32I’m flopping around during that session, and I’m feeling like shit, right?
07:37I’m like, I’m second guessing myself, I got that imposter syndrome running
07:41around now, I’m just like, hold on a second, like, Am I mistaken about what
07:47my role is in all of this ecosystem?
07:49Like, am I not a front end engineer?
07:52You know, is it common for front end engineers to actually be full stack?
07:56Now we come to find out that, unfortunately, now in the year
08:002024, the answer is yes, actually.
08:03And Brad Frost has of course talked about the front of the front ends,
08:06like that’s Truly where we are.
08:08And it’s, it’s clearly front of the front end.
08:11You’ll never see in a job title that just doesn’t exist.
08:15Right.
08:15But we are coming up to have these job titles, similar ones.
08:20I’ve been speaking a lot about that recently, but that’s the thing that’s
08:23grinding my gears right now, right?
08:24You see these titles that LinkedIn and other job posting sites, and
08:30they claim to be front end, and then you read down to the nitty gritty
08:36and you find out it’s actually.
08:39Either a full stack engineer that they’re looking for, right?
08:42Someone who’s looking for go and Kotlin and graph QL and my SQL Kafka.
08:47You’re looking for more than a full stack person, right?
08:49Because that’s, that’s, we’re talking about different
08:52platforms at that point, right?
08:54With things like Kotlin, right?
08:56That’s not the web at all.
08:59So they don’t know what they’re looking for.
09:01Bottom line, but.
09:05Even folks that are looking for front end in the job title, right?
09:11They might be looking for full stack or what this is really turning into
09:16these days is a JavaScript engineer.
09:19They sit in the JavaScript ecosystem and all they do is write JavaScript and maybe
09:25There’s some HTML and CSS that happens in there, but they’re not experts in that.
09:29No, they’ve been writing in frameworks like React or Angular or Vue and in that
09:34ecosystem, working with, you know, things like hooks or what’s the new one now.
09:39Signals.
09:39That’s the new one.
09:40So, all of these different JavaScript ecosystems, , that’s
09:44what front end is now.
09:46When people say front end, what they really mean, typically,
09:51is JavaScript engineer.
09:52Okay?
09:54If you are an expert in HTML and CSS and, you know, DOM manipulation
09:59kind of JavaScript, you are not a front end engineer anymore in
10:03the world of these job postings.
10:05In the world of these job postings, you are actually a, what has been
10:11called a couple of different things.
10:13What’s been getting a lot of traction recently is the title of Design Engineer.
10:18I have some feelings about that that I’ll share in a minute.
10:20But you’ll find things like Design Engineer, you’ll find things like UX
10:24Engineer, you’ll find UI Engineer.
10:27You’ll find a design technologist, or just, you know, of course,
10:30replacing engineer with technologist in many of those cases.
10:33So, those are the things that you are.
10:36You end up being this hybrid role between design and development.
10:41Even if you don’t associate yourself as being a designer.
10:46You sit there.
10:47And the reason that you end up sitting there is because With that expertise
10:50that you have with HTML and CSS, there is an innate quality about you.
10:57I’m, I’m, and I’m just blanking on everybody with this right now.
11:00There’s an innate quality about you that you care about that user interface.
11:05And because you care about that user interface, there is a
11:07design quality A user experience quality that you hold with you.
11:13Okay?
11:14That’s what you really are.
11:18Okay?
11:20How the industry has, has moved away from front end engineering, meaning what it
11:26used to mean, which again is really what we used to do as web development, right?
11:30Like that whole front end ecosystem.
11:32Now that the front end world has gotten so much more complicated with, you know
11:38npm packages and Webpack and eventually now Vite, which is much better, but
11:43that’s another side, but it became so much more complicated than it used to be.
11:48And that’s also for better or for worse.
11:50It’s that there’s a natural progression in there that I wholly have empathy for,
11:55but going back to these titles, right.
11:59The folks that are writing HTML and CSS as in this expert way.
12:04All right.
12:04These are the folks that are now design engineers, UX engineers,
12:08design technologists, and finding roles for us has been a challenge
12:15for lots of different reasons.
12:16Number one, we still haven’t really decided on this name yet.
12:20Okay.
12:21You got Google who’s got UX engineers, Microsoft’s got UX engineers, right?
12:25Those have been staples for a while, and design engineer is ended ending up being a
12:29more broad term that covers a lot more and Kind of encroaches a little bit in some
12:35other facets that are not necessarily UX.
12:38I think that’s what’s going on there.
12:39I mean, before design engineer was a role, it really just was UX engineer,
12:45design technologist, that those are the two roles and they were essentially
12:48the same person and the way that I disambiguated it was that a UX engineer.
12:55Was a person that was full time on a app development team.
12:59You would say like a, a, a Gmail or a notion or any of those like application
13:04development teams that, you know, we’re working on a singular application or
13:08singular platform that was meant to be grown over time and, and made better.
13:13Right.
13:14And I would, On the flip side, see a design technologist and see that often
13:18be assigned to the same kind of role, but a person who had worked in agency work.
13:24So this is a person that’s looking at new technologies and trying to implement them
13:28in a fancy way, elegant way, gorgeous way.
13:31And it ends up being more of a churn kind of scenario where you end
13:36up not really growing necessarily a single product, but you’re.
13:40Affecting multiple products with a lot of you know, like I said, churn as it keeps
13:44coming out with different, different new and interesting ideas for these different
13:48brands that you might be working with.
13:49But effectively, again, the same role.
13:51It’s just whether you are an agency or in an app or platform team.
13:56But now, you know, this is merging a little bit.
13:59And I think that’s where the design engineer thing is coming in where we’re
14:01kind of merging those two things together.
14:03And that role has been getting a lot of traction, a lot of blog posts
14:07out there, a lot of people who are recognizing the amazing impact of
14:12what we do as design engineers.
14:14I mean, think about it, right?
14:16Think about some person who is not only able to think of.
14:24a novel idea or novel experience or novel concept that they Think would be really
14:29cool and then they are able to not only design it But also make it work make
14:36it come to life Imagine that imagine a person who could just go ahead and
14:39say oh, I have a really good idea Let me just build that that’s what we are.
14:46We are And I’m not going to, I don’t want to say better than designers, but we’re
14:51more formidable to be able to take this idea, this design idea that we might
14:57have and then see it all the way through.
15:03Right to launch, right?
15:05There is so much power in that, right?
15:08Meanwhile, again, that design vertical has to really kind of
15:12stop at the prototype phase.
15:15It’s as far as Figma can go, right?
15:17Or any other platform.
15:19And then those strict engineers, right?
15:20Those JavaScript engineers or the full stack ones.
15:23They don’t have the capability to of making something that
15:29a user really wants to use.
15:31Sure, maybe other engineers, certainly, yes.
15:33But when we’re talking about the masses, right, creating a product
15:38that is engaging, that’s a skill that the designers typically usually have,
15:44but not a lot of engineers, right?
15:46Those engineers typically, again, this is all just, You know, stereotypical kind of
15:49stuff, but the engineers, they’re really thinking about, you know, those big O
15:53notations and comp sci related stuff and trying to make things really performant
15:58and optimize and all that stuff, and there’s a lot of good qualities in that
16:01too, but that In the middle, right?
16:04Being able to have that idea and launch it, right?
16:07Just boom, it’s out there.
16:10I don’t understand why they’re not hiring us by the dozens, right?
16:15For folks that have some idea some inkling of a new startup idea, those
16:21people should be hiring UX engineers or design engineers immediately.
16:25It should be the first freaking hire, right?
16:27Just, what’s this idea?
16:28Boom, get it out there right now, right?
16:30I think that would be the most effective use of anybody’s resources.
16:35But again, it’s wild to me that, that it’s only really being recognized now.
16:39And I’ve wrote about this as a UX engineer.
16:42On my blog.
16:43And the title of that was UX engineer, a terminal career 1.
16:47And I’d speak about that in that post because as a UX engineer, I was in a
16:54situation where yes, I was believing to be able to create great value for
16:59the company I was working at, but the career ladder was non existent, right?
17:05Us UX engineers.
17:06Okay, great.
17:06You hire us and then you throw us either in a design org or the engineering org.
17:11And unfortunately, that manager is used to managing a particular kind of
17:18employee, a designer or an engineer.
17:22And what happens there is that, that manager looks at you and goes, Well,
17:28you’re not doing all the things that the designer would do, so I don’t
17:31know if you’re able to be promoted.
17:34You gotta do more stuff.
17:35You gotta be more designery Or, on the engineering side, you’re
17:38not engineer enough, right?
17:40You’re not, you’re not doing all the things the engineer, I can’t promote you.
17:43And we get stuck.
17:45We get stuck because these managers are stuck in their verticals.
17:49They all they know is design or they all they know is engineering.
17:52It takes a proper UX engineering track places like Google and
17:58Microsoft have these that are able to, to grow these people there.
18:05And it’s a challenge.
18:05It’s a challenge.
18:06It’s getting better out there slowly, but surely.
18:08But that’s the thing that drives me nuts.
18:11So, like I said, this job posting, just fired me the hell up.
18:17Just fires me the hell up there, you know, in terms of what I’m seeing in the
18:21world of our roles out there and trying to find something that fits us, right?
18:29And that’s, that’s what I’m gonna bring out today.
18:32If you’re out there and you have a conversation that you want to have
18:35about design engineering or the related fields, I’m absolutely able.
18:40And willing to talk about this stuff.
18:43I, as you could tell, I’m super passionate about this kind of field.
18:49This is what we do as being something incredible.
18:53And I have a great value for the rest of us in this industry.
18:57So, but like I said, I didn’t, I didn’t expect to talk about this tonight,
19:01but man, I just, I had a whole bunch of feelings that had to come out and
19:05I hope it resonates with some of you folks that are out there about the.
19:08The, the difficulties.
19:09I know there’s people that are out there that have, you know, lost
19:12their jobs on this kind of stuff.
19:14And I want you to know that, that if you’re doing this kind of stuff that
19:20I’m speaking about, you’re doing the right thing and keep doing it, right?
19:25Hang out on CodePen, make some cool shit, you know, find out
19:29about the newest, latest, greatest, you know, CSS properties, the
19:33new JavaScript APIs and just, you know, Check this stuff out, right?
19:38Because I think there will be more and more companies getting keen on what we
19:44do and recognizing the benefit of this, this particular role that I’m talking
19:51about, you know, design engineering.
19:52And I think it’s going to be great.
19:54I have actually one more anecdote, which is really cool.
19:56And I mentioned about this in that blog post.
20:00And in that blog post, I mention that I was given the title of
20:06design engineer back in 2001.
20:10So that was 23 years ago.
20:13And the context where I was given that title is interesting.
20:19And I’m gonna take the rest of the time for the episode right now to kind of
20:22explain it because I think it’s really So, back in high school, I was with the
20:29student council and I wasn’t elected into the student council, but I would
20:32do stuff with the student council.
20:35I loved having extracurricular activities.
20:37I was always after school doing something.
20:39And one of the things that was happening in the years that I was in
20:43high school is that the student council would create floats for homecoming.
20:48So they would be, you know, these different themes that
20:51all the grades would get.
20:53And in the workings of this, I ended up kind of taking charge as the person who
21:01would design the float and also begin executing the large portions of it.
21:06So the first year I got involved was my 10th grade year and the whole theme was
21:10cereals and my class got Fruit Loops.
21:15And I was just visiting them because I was like, Oh, I didn’t
21:17know what this was all about.
21:18So I was visiting them, and they were like, Yeah, we have Fruit
21:20Loops, and we’re trying to make, you know, A cereal box with chicken
21:24wire and, and wood, and, you know.
21:26So I’m looking at it and I go, You know, it would be really cool if like, Toucan
21:30Sam’s nose, like, came out of the box.
21:32And they’re like, We don’t know how you would possibly do that.
21:36I said, oh, that’s easy.
21:37Now, meanwhile, never working with chicken wire before.
21:40This is the first time we’re gonna work with chicken wire.
21:42And I’m like, oh, this should be easy.
21:44I just go ahead and make a cone out of chicken wire, slap it on the
21:46box, and then all the other students can fill it up with pretty colors.
21:51That’s exactly what we did.
21:53I think I also made like a spoon, a large spoon like that as well.
21:56And the class ended up getting fourth place out of the four.
21:59You know, classes there, but they really appreciated the ability
22:04that I had to go ahead and like, think of an idea and make it.
22:08So the following year they gave me full reign on designing the float.
22:13So I designed this float and the topic was cities.
22:18And the senior class got New York, of course.
22:20So us, as the junior class, we got Las Vegas.
22:23I was like, perfect, I know exactly what to do with Las Vegas.
22:25So I had three main attractions that I wanted to, to add in there.
22:29The first one that I I Remember doing was the slot machine.
22:36So the idea behind the slot machine was gonna be a big slot machine It’s
22:39probably about eight foot tall and in the slot machine would have space
22:43for two people and there would be these rollers that would have you know
22:48symbols on them and the person behind them would roll the you know, the you
22:52know, the sevens and the slots and all that stuff that would be going behind.
22:54So as the float’s going around, you could see the thing moving.
22:57But the really cool thing about that slot machine was that there was a
23:00bed of money that I printed out.
23:02Fake money, of course.
23:03And I had a person with a leaf blower there that when we were passing, like,
23:08basically where the judging area was gonna be, I told him to, you know,
23:11turn on the Leaf blower and the money just exploded out of the slot machine.
23:18So cool, right?
23:20so the other thing I had was I had the the sphinx from Luxor I think it was there at
23:26the time that I that I put on the end and I had a bulldog face on it because that
23:29Was our mascot so I made that completely out of papier mâché And chicken wire.
23:33So it actually looked like a bulldog.
23:35I wish I had pictures I’m sure they’re flying around somewhere.
23:37But so we made that on the one side and then the other side I think, they were
23:41designed to be playing cards, I think.
23:44Like all four sides, but, I don’t think we had enough time, so we
23:48ended up making like a big square, or cube die, right there on the end.
23:52So that’s what we had there, and, we did actually pretty good, we ended
23:56up getting second place for that one.
23:58The seniors got first place.
23:59And it was traditional, actually, for the seniors to get first place,
24:02because they’re on their way out anyway.
24:04Because we got second place they really, you know, put a lot of responsibility in
24:09me, and saying, you know, they gave me a lot of praise for all that design, and
24:12executing it, and, and having that happen.
24:15So The next year, as a senior year, you’d think, Oh, shoo in, right?
24:20We’re a senior year, we get to pick, you know, out of the theme, and, you
24:24know, Donnie’s here, he’s gonna go ahead and knock it out of the park, right?
24:28Well, this particular year, we had theme parks as the theme, and we
24:35were able to choose Disney World.
24:37I don’t think I actually chose myself, I don’t remember, but I think, you know,
24:40the class ended up choosing it somehow.
24:42So Walt Disney World.
24:43So I was gonna go ahead and design the three parks, right?
24:46I was gonna have Magic Kingdom Castle, I was gonna have the Epcot
24:49Ball, and then I think I was gonna do the Water Tower, that’s what was
24:53there at MGM Studios at the time.
24:55So I was gonna have the three things, it would be very clear about, you
24:57know, what was happening there.
24:58And, The thing that I really wanted to do, just like last year, was
25:04I wanted some very interactive kind of piece in the whole thing.
25:11Now, I was thinking about those, those three things, and I was like,
25:13the best thing that could be really cool as interactive is the Epcot
25:17ball opening up to present something like 2001, which was our class.
25:23So like, opening that up and then, you know, that would be really cool.
25:26Almost like a kind of, almost explosion like.
25:30So.
25:31I’m designing that.
25:32I had like even a prototype, physical prototype, a small
25:36scale of how that would work.
25:39It is actually using some tensegrity to make it so that the supports
25:43didn’t show up in the front because it was gonna go ahead and be
25:47in the way of the ball opening.
25:49And then I had the Magic Kingdom Castle and then the Water Tower.
25:52Those two things were stationary objects for the most part, so nothing crazy there.
25:56But it was that EPCOT ball that I was like focusing a lot of my attention on.
26:00So, we were getting to build, and some of the volunteers that were working
26:05with us in terms of like the adults that would do a lot more of the you know,
26:09the, I guess some of the stuff that we didn’t have the experience in doing,
26:13they’re looking at my designs and going, I don’t think this is going to work.
26:19And I’m like, I’m More than confident that this is going to work because like
26:23I said, I’ve done the research like I did prototype You know, I have drawings.
26:28I got you know, the physical like the physical prototype obviously
26:30as well It’s it’s gonna work.
26:32You got to trust me on this.
26:35I don’t trust you and I was so Disappointed so much so that I
26:45left I just went up and left and I didn’t come back to help them.
26:49I left them stranded and I feel bad about it.
26:51Looking back on it, I was, you know, teenager, right?
26:53I was 17 years old, you know, I, I don’t know how to handle my feelings.
26:59So but yeah, I left cause I, you know, they put so much trust in me over
27:03the number of years to get this done.
27:05Why, why would it change?
27:07Right.
27:08That’s the thing, the thing that was really bothering me, but I say all
27:12this because At graduation, there’s a, like, the front row when you are,
27:19you know, getting your, your degrees and, and whatnot, your diplomas.
27:22That front row is dedicated to student council.
27:27And I was in the front row because the student council, Even after all that,
27:32even after leaving them, gave me the title of design engineer for our class.
27:38Made it up.
27:39And I didn’t give them that title, they did.
27:41They, they said that that was the thing that was most appropriate to,
27:45to give me as kind of a recognition for the stuff that I, I did.
27:51You know, and I felt really, you know, great about that particular piece.
27:56So clearly I feel passionate about this stuff.
28:00It’s in my blood.
28:00It’s been my DNA.
28:02So I’m super interested to know how you folks are feeling out there.
28:07When it comes to Your place in the world, you know, and the things that
28:12you’re passionate about, the things that you want to do, the things that
28:14you want to contribute to society, and hopefully get paid for that.
28:18So, let me know what you think.
28:19Tweet at me, WireframeFM.
28:21. And I hope to hear some cool stories, and thanks for joining me on this.
28:28See ya.
