SwirlyUnicorn
SwirlyUnicorn
Student

How to transition from frontend to backend development?

Hi everyone, I am a frontend developer(3yr+) who wants to switch to backend development. I am looking for some advice from people who have made a similar transition in their career. How was your journey and what was your plan?

What do you recommend I should do to become a backend developer? What skills and technologies should I learn?

Also, how should I handle the salary and job search aspects? Should I take a salary cut or join at the same salary? 💰 How should I approach HR or put myself on job portals?

Please help me. I am feeling confused and unsure about my career path.🙏

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11mo ago
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TwirlyWalrus
TwirlyWalrus

Backend is way more complex than the frontend. You would need to know a lot of the skills and many times these skills are not similar. Follow https://roadmap.sh/backend and maybe build some projects. But I must tell you, this isn't an easy switch and if you like frontend but want to grow more than just web, I would suggest exploring desktop and mobile app development rather than moving to backend.

SwirlyUnicorn
SwirlyUnicorn
Student11mo

Intresting, thanks for advice. Any idea core native app development like with kotlin and swift or react native or flutter which ones is in demand?
I don't often see job posting. Is market saturated for them? Or it's niche skills

TwirlyWalrus
TwirlyWalrus

When you put the tag frontend engineer, you should know all of them and they are very similar too just the difference is in nomenclature and languages. Rest, the underlying concepts of components, state management, API calls, stacks of pages/activities are pretty much the same. Don't seek a job for a specific tech. Seek for multiple job titles like frontend engineer/developer, mobile/android/ios developer etc.

SnoozyPotato
SnoozyPotato

I know a guy working in Mainframe. who moved to FE, all he did was built a profile page for himself with the most advanced possible animation back in 2016, the moment recruiter or the interviewer opened it they were in awe, you can try something like this, just that it has to be in reverse

SwirlyUnicorn
SwirlyUnicorn
Student11mo

Nice idea, but I'm wondering how I could showcase my backend skills. I can't optimize queries at scale since it won't happen for personal projects. I can't showcase that I optimized reads or writes in a certain way. I'm a little confused. Any suggestions?

SnoozyPotato
SnoozyPotato

You can do all sorts of things if you have decent machine, write a sample application which can process millions of records per minute read/write. You can showcase your good coding standards git repo. If your system can’t take that much load, someone can clone and see for themself if they have superior machine

BouncyDumpling
BouncyDumpling

Firstly get some knowledge on backend and do some pet projects on your own. The roadmap.sh link is a good starting point for you. Then ask your manager to see if you pickup small bugs in the backend. Getting some help from backend folks if you are stuck. Transition into full stack role and later you can choose to transition to backend. I was a full stack for almost 3 years before completely shifting to backend due to the vastness and complexity of problems.

SwirlyUnicorn
SwirlyUnicorn
Student11mo

Seems practical. I will plan with this.

ZestyPotato
ZestyPotato

I don't have any relevant information. But wanted to know which app do you use for creating this photo

SwirlyUnicorn
SwirlyUnicorn
Student11mo

Using Chat GPT plus

FluffyWaffle
FluffyWaffle

Step 1 : If your company allows start taking some minor backend tasks .

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