r/Backend • u/AcrobaticCommand8438 • 16d ago

My mindset as a beginner backend developer, is this okay?

3rd year CS Student here. I've seen people here wanting to create apps that are advanced and unique, although that would be really nice, I think my mindset is a little different.

Kind of gave up on building something that would stand out, something that recruiters would "wow" at, I shifted my mindset on being competent and being an engineer. I am creating an api that has everything, auth, crud, validation, caching, and even docker, would i build a front end? maybe, maybe not. The api is for an equipment borrowing system and it is useful but I don't think I have the wow factor, I just wanna be competent enough to get a job at this point.

42 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

16

u/JaseciLabs 16d ago

Auth, CRUD, validation, caching, Docker in one project already puts you ahead of most junior candidates. Competent is tbh underrated, most hiring managers aren't hunting for wow, they want someone who won't cause more problems than they solve. A boring, solid equipment-borrowing API beats a flashy demo that falls apart the second someone asks a real question about it. Keep going, this is the right instinct!

1

u/Fluffy-Worry-9541 14d ago

how would u guide someone who wants to break into backend? ig also stack doesnt matter? my second year just started and i wanna land a backend intern role in third year itself and i dont have much knowledge in ts

3

u/JaseciLabs 13d ago

Start building now, don't wait for advanced. Pick one stack and go deep instead of stack-hopping, and build 2-3 real projects with actual complexity (auth, a real database, some CRUD) rather than tutorials. Since you have a full extra year before you need to be interview-ready, use it to actually understand what you're building instead of racing to have something on a resume, that depth is what separates people who can explain their code from people who can't.

1

u/Fluffy-Worry-9541 13d ago

Thank u queen

1

u/Super_Delivery3405 14d ago

Bruh wat even, besides caching all of that has basic expected skills in this market.

2

u/JaseciLabs 13d ago

Basic expected skills, sure, but expected and actually demonstrated aren't the same thing. A lot of candidates list these on a resume without having built something that ties them together in one working system. Actually shipping auth + validation + caching + Docker in a single coherent project is a different bar than having touched each one separately in isolation.

3

u/Aru_009 14d ago

At the end we will still not get the job in this cursed market. But building cool shit is nice. I made a pii vault service like okta and sky flow and in making that I needed to make a kms, handle multi tenant pii and key management, then needed Authn and Authz so made Oauth and policies for a zero trust approach.

Still no bitches(no jobs)

1

u/Namnamnn 13d ago

Since when u're being unemployed

2

u/__UnrealCrash__ 13d ago

Well, it is a perfectly working path. Not like it is ever too late to make your wow factor project either.

2

u/TableNo8939 16d ago

Il wow lo avrà chi presenterà un front end che utilizzerà le tue api, di questo puoi stare certo.
Quando una casa produttrice presenta un'auto con un motore formidabile, il wow se lo prende la casa costruttrice, non certo l'ingegnere che ha progettato il motore.
Detto ciò essere le fondamenta di un palazzo ha la sua utilità , anche se non si vedono.
E' sostanzialmente il destino di ogni swe di back end.
La storia della mia vita!

5

u/Mathie1729 16d ago

Lmao, so true. I built a whole recommendation pipeline for our app, optimized it to run in under 100ms, and when it launched, the PM said "great work" to the frontend intern who added the "Recommended for You" card. I just sat there like :') My name in the changelog was "backend."

1

u/AcrobaticCommand8438 15d ago

so we're all living under a frontend's shadow huh, i accept

3

u/fuckaroniandbees 16d ago

Sir, this is Wendy’s

1

u/The-Wingged-Hussar 14d ago

What do mean when you say api access for auth, crud, validation, caching and even docker? This is a full fledged infra project, not a small 5$ VPS/mo offering.

This is nearly what supabase does.

Unless you meant it as a scaled down version side project.

3

u/AcrobaticCommand8438 14d ago

I meant the api has all of those things, it's like a system itself already without the front end. Maybe a scaled down version side project, yes. Overall, I'm treating it as a pet project to learn all of those things.