I think the true problem here lies in reconciling titles with responsibilities. In software engineering most of our titles are very generic and can span different disciplines entirely. A senior dev working on database and a senior dev working on front-end probably shouldn't be compensated the exact same because their disciplines are completely different so conversely the value they bring to the company can vary wildly, but they're still senior devs by title. But if the best mechanism by which we can 'reward' these people is by adjusting their title this comes with an implied difference of responsibilities. Instead I think we need to do away with the HR non-sense of correlating titles with value. If an engineer does something of value that should be rewarded, give them a raise or bonus, not a title change.
>A senior dev working on database and a senior dev working on front-end probably shouldn't be compensated the exact same
Strong disagree. There is an antipattern I've seen across the entire industry, including big companies that should know better, where UI work is undervalued and considered "not as complex" or "simpler". I have fought with promo committees who didn't want to promote people because they assumed the UI work was "easy". All of the people making these claims had worked exclusively in backend for a long time and all of the should have to go take an IC role putting up with the hell that is modern frontend development. Only then will I give any credence to how difficult they think UI work is.
If your argument was "because there are 10x more frontend devs fighting for the same job", that's one thing, but saying it should be done because the disciplines are different is nonsense.
I think you're misunderstanding my argument, or maybe you have a rather radical point of view on compensation in the industry. My point was that compensation should be directly tied to your value to the company and not loosely correlated with your job title as it is currently. Determining how valuable you are to a company can be hard in itself though. I actually fully agree with you about companies under valuing front end positions, but I think that's more due to market forces (there's a larger supply of front-end web developers than any other type of developer) which is slightly outside the scope of my argument.
It's strange to me that you believe different disciplines should be compensated the same as no other industry would even consider that. Imagine I'm making a child's toy, should the CAD designer be compensated the same as my machinist just because they're working on the same project? In the same token why should the developer who is doing a completely different job from another developer be compensated exactly the same just because they're working on the same webapp and coding? It just doesn't make sense.
> A senior dev working on database and a senior dev working on front-end probably shouldn't be compensated the exact same because their disciplines are completely different so conversely the value they bring to the company can vary wildly, but they're still senior devs by title.
Exactly. The UI is the front face of the company, facing the customer. Nobody cares what's behind. UI is also much harder. That's why I almost never do UI or UX work. It's way too hard. Doing the backend is so much easier. And nobody cares if it needs 2x more memory or 2x more time. But if you are wasting screen estate and create annoying click-throughs everybody gets excited
