That post from like a month ago (I was planning to write this the day after and then immediately forgot and this has been in drafts since lol) about web devs not having some basic knowledge of the web has been stuck in my brain for a while because they are correct as I said in the notes but it's the landscape of web dev right now that's causing it and I don't see it stopping anytime soon.
I've been a professional Front End Dev for just over 7 years at this point (now a UX Dev working on a design system), and while I have a good chunk of experience under my belt, I've gotten to the point where I realize just how much shit I do not know and it's a LOOOOT.
The current landscape of web dev is that most projects and products are robust web apps that, in the absolute best case scenario, are gonna require, at minimum:
User experience research and work (UX)
User interface design (UI)
Front end with accessibility and mobile responsiveness (I am here)
Front end interactions and state management (JS engineers)
Backend database and API work
Backend infrastructure work (including setting up the dev and QA test environments)
QA testing
Developer experience to make sure devs/engineers are working efficiently with the tools they have
I'm sure I've missed some roles here, but you can see why people end up specializing when they work on bigger projects and products. The web is so unbelievably JavaScript heavy nowadays that all these specializations are Kind Of Required™, but that's absolute best case scenario. A lot of companies simply do not have the budget (or desire) to fill all these roles. So then you have a bunch of people who are kinda okay to mediocre at multiple of these things instead focusing on being good at one or two things. And then put in timeline requirements. AND THEN you have some companies who have different philosophies on how to build their core product: some are very UX focused and will put time into making sure that's present, others are not and will not care about UX in the slightest and thus those roles may not exist there at all. And...well things aren't going to be as quality as you expect when you consider all of those points.
The web is full of applications now that require a lot more expertise in different fields than just a basic static site with no data. That's not to say static sites don't exist or have no place anymore, tho. But this is where we are. It sucks.
