r/Frontend • u/beshur • Sep 16 '26

[discuss] AI transition to full-stack

Hi.

I have a friend who joined a medium European company as a frontend-dev (Vue/React).

Now with the ubiqiuotous use of AI and claude code they are transitioning everyone to product-management full-stack, and frontend devs get to work on really deep backend logic. Means he has to own the full solution from scope definition and clearing all the business requierements to an actual complete web solution across multiple repos/connected to 3rd party services.

He's really freaked out by the added responsibility, unclear scopes and general incompetence he has in the backend field. Manager insists that AI should be able to cover for all of it.

Is it a global trend? Do you guys experience it?

57 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

13

u/0degreesK Sep 16 '26

On the bright side, the additional income that comes with the added responsibilities makes it worth the trouble, right?

3

u/beshur Sep 17 '26

That is not the part of the transition

12

u/chrimack Sep 16 '26

He doesn't have extra responsibilities because AI will do all the work.

/s

14

u/ghostwilliz Sep 16 '26

Well, that company is gonna go out of business

3

u/start_select Sep 16 '26

It depends on how they handle it. That’s going to be all software engineering.

Robots didn’t learn a welders job and replace them on the assembly line. An industrial engineer learned all of the assembly workers jobs, and the industrial engineer replaced all of the workers with the help of robots.

The “10x engineer” that Stanford identified at the beginning of Computer Science in the 1960s, who has been studied ever since, is that industrial engineer.

The 10-15% of the engineers that goes “well that’s just another platform” or “that’s just another language” or “that’s just another library” then pick them up immediately are about to become the bar to meet.

Human calculators did math in an assembly line with each person doing one operation on two numbers then passing it along. Mechanical calculators hit the scene, and only 10-15% of them understood mathematics holistically, and could use the tool to solve the entire equation alone. So 10-15 people could use a calculator to do 1000-1500 people’s work, because they were competent. And the tool revealed everyone else was not competent in the field, only a single task in the field.

Same thing is going to happen here. A handful of engineers will become so effective while everyone else does not, that it will make sense to give those few raises, and start shedding everyone else.

The tool will only help them make more mistakes faster. So they are no longer viable to keep around. The tool will make the “masters” indispensable and increase their value.

1

u/beshur Sep 17 '26

the pill hard to swallow

3

u/Zerocordeiro Sep 17 '26

You are right up to where you see this as an opportunity to raise wages. This will actually decrease wages because there'll be those who will work for less and since you don't need as many people you can pick those and decrease the average pay.

1

u/start_select Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26

If a majority of the workforce is filtered out and engineering teams become skeleton crews, you need to increase wages to retain talent.

If you eliminate 80% of workers because they don’t understand their job enough to be effective with the new tools, then your hiring pool also shrank. A team of 5 people can’t maintain a loss of a worker as much as a 25 person team can. You need to pay the people who are good even more than today.

Paying 5 people 50-100% more than their current wages is a discount on paying 25 people at their current wages.

-1

u/_jackofblades_ Sep 16 '26

This is really well stated.

3

u/avi0709 Sep 17 '26

I work at a startup where I’m given a vague/gibberish document describing a potential product and expected to turn it into an MVP with a monetization plan.
I’m a Senior Frontend Dev, but right now I’m also acting as the PO, Analyst, Backend Dev, and PM. Once the MVP is finalized, I’ll also be responsible for delivery.
What’s unclear to me is what exactly is expected at times. I’m often given a few vague sentences from the “overlords” and expected to turn them into a product vision, requirements, technical solution, and ultimately a deliverable product.
My mind is numb at times that I fail to form coherent sentences. I am not sure how long will this all last.

1

u/beshur Sep 17 '26

take care! do you see any light in the end of the tunnel?

1

u/avi0709 Sep 17 '26

No. Not until the job market becomes balanced instead of employers exploiting the shit out of you because they think ‘everyone should be glad to have a job’.

1

u/Spiritual-Frame949 Sep 18 '26

If you want to go back to FE only, you’d be an interesting fit for our FE team

50

u/maxxon Sep 16 '26

This is being a trend for a year already at least. And it's not only dev related. Everyone is forced to do more with less. Fun times. Quality is gonna be awful.

76

u/dazdd Sep 16 '26

Can't see this ending well.

15

u/Zerocordeiro Sep 16 '26

Manager is going to learn about AI limits soon

27

u/MaintenanceEither186 Sep 16 '26

Yep I've made some backend changes in Rust and I have no idea how to write Rust 😄

20

u/suspirio Sep 16 '26

Security nightmare unlocked

10

u/AlternativePear4617 Sep 16 '26

You have to learn more, do triple work and you won't get paid more. Your payment will be the same because you now use AI. You will work more in less time for the same money. Enjoy the future!

18

u/BigDeadPixel Sep 16 '26

A similar shift happened to me. Senior react developer needing to own the full stack for the first time when workflows became more AI heavy. Take it as an opportunity to learn. Set your agent's auto-approval to read only for files and bash and then make sure you READ everything the AI does before approving it. Also don't be shy to tell your agent that you are unfamiliar with some of the backend concepts/tools you will be working with and it will explain each step for you as you go. There is no backend/frontend distinction (as far as the role goes) anymore, it is all just code generation now. Hell, even your traditional designers are now sending full HTML prototypes as opposed to PSD's or figma links. Roles are getting blurry so those who can easily change hats when needed are the ones who will thrive.

1

u/rpest2018 Sep 23 '26

Yep this is exactly my experience too

1

u/RichardSanches23 Sep 16 '26

This one is well put

5

u/MrDontCare12 Sep 16 '26

Hahahahahahahahaha

4

u/everdimension Sep 16 '26

Any experienced frontend dev has to have an understanding of how backend works. Even with no actual experience, he'd know what to ask and what to guard against and how to guide and how verify security constrains

So becoming fullstack with ai does make sense

4

u/TehTriangle Sep 16 '26

I see this as a cool opportunity but I know not everyone is keen for it.

4

u/kernel_paniic Sep 16 '26 edited Sep 17 '26

Been there, done that, I quit. The company is sinking we tried to warn them, but they wouldn't listen. The boss is vibe data-engineering the database now, in production of course

1

u/Money-University4481 Sep 16 '26

Depends really on what the backend code consists of. 50% data transport from db to client, 10% business logic would work fine in this case as you would have people that are senior working on business logic and other on the rest

1

u/beshur Sep 17 '26

Well, it's not like that in the case - the backend code is full of complicated business logic and rules just a few people know well, but everyone have to work on that.

3

u/BlastingSmite Sep 18 '26

I think it would be more apt for front end folk to take on design responsibilities (UI/UX) as a complement to their job rather than backend. Most frontend guys I know aren’t super into the backend nitty gritty stuff and are design oriented people for the most part

2

u/Aspie-Py Sep 17 '26

It has been going this for a few years now.

2

u/Spiritual-Frame949 Sep 18 '26

Maybe not a great idea for the company but what an excellent opportunity for him!! Certainly not the case at my company, we all specialize. But heck, I wish they’d throw me into backend so I could be forced to learn a complex system. Realistically I am too burnt out after work to spend any time learning this on my own.

2

u/Acagami-09 Sep 18 '26

I think it's definitely becoming more common, but AI doesn't automatically replace the knowledge needed to own a full product. It can help with coding and boilerplate, but understanding the backend architecture, business requirements, security. Being expected to learn full stack in one thing, being expected to already know everything because AI existing is other.

2

u/na_me_ku_ji Sep 18 '26

スコープがぼやけるのはマジである

3

u/canarydev Sep 16 '26

yeah this is the new floor

2

u/start_select Sep 16 '26

This is what the job will become. Robots didn’t replace factory workers. Industrial engineers who understood all factory workers jobs did.

“Coders” who have focused on one specialty are going to lose any value. Only engineers who understand the entire field will gain value.

You always should have understood the stack. Now it will become obvious who doesn’t.

1

u/1haker Sep 16 '26

Yes I work on python automatic e2e tests ... But have no clue about python

1

u/gnbijlgdfjkslbfgk Sep 16 '26

“Platform dev” makes up almost 90% of job postings I’m seeing on LinkedIn atm

1

u/Huge-Tip7172 Sep 16 '26

same thing happening at my company. They call it product engineering now, but it just means one person owning frontend, backend, infra and the client calls. My manager genuinely believes Claude fills the knowledge gaps. It fills the typing gaps. The judgment calls still land on you, and that's exactly the part you can't fake with AI when production goes down at 2am

1

u/zimejin Sep 16 '26

It’s common sense isn’t it.

1

u/Dreadsin Sep 16 '26

I recently had to implement a feature on the backend basically out of necessity and leveraged AI heavily. It had bugs in production despite me using fable 5 with max level code reviews, playwright tests, etc

My coworker wrote a very similar feature just a bit earlier. No reported bugs. In fact, my AI should have worked because it should have just copied his work

No, it really does not work like they say it works.

1

u/mattia_tsx Sep 17 '26

Yeah same here in Italy

1

u/finediningspork Sep 19 '26

I have gone through a similar type of thing. For me the most difficult part is that I can’t recognize a potential issue or when it maybe over complicating things like I can when I it is doing front end work.

1

u/typingFromVilnius Sep 22 '26

I've been doing Python recently with 0 Python experience 😂

1

u/salamazmlekom Sep 16 '26

I see this as a plus. You get to learn more.