Something is not right in the world of UI/Front End/Full Stack Engineering...

I received another call from an alumni's friend who was laid off as a front end/full stack developer.

Just to give you some numbers:

We have helped over 340 candidates secure jobs in the last 5 years.

6 have been laid off since January 1st.

All of them are UI professionals except one who is a software tester.

None of our data analysts, project managers, or business analysts were laid off.

Based on several conversations I've had, there might be a few reasons, the biggest one being the rise of platforms such as Salesforce and others.

When you are building or migrating to a new app or platform, you have two choices:

1. Build a custom one, which means building the entire infrastructure from front end to back end, including DevOps, cloud, testing, security, accessibility, and a whole bunch of other stuff. (You can also use low code/no code platforms such as Appian).

2. Use Salesforce or a similar cloud-based platform. With a few customizations, you can be up and running in a few weeks, at most a few months.Hundreds of Salesforce partners, such as Silverline, are readily available.

Previously, most of the customers' requirements were so niche that there was no choice but to build custom platforms.

However, newer purpose-built clouds such as marketing, insurance, and finance have reduced friction.

Whatever you need, there is a cloud for that.

Plus, from my experience, most of the custom software built by non-tech companies works poorly. I was one of those non-tech engineers building software, and I would never use what I built.

But even platforms like Salesforce cannot provide full functionality for every business.

What they offer are escape hatches to include any third-party/custom functionality, including your own versions. If you are still missing functionality, there are thousands of apps on the App Store/Google Cloud/Salesforce AppExchange.

The role of UI has changed; they now should learn to work on integrations and make different systems talk to each other. Instead of building from the ground up, they need to fill in for missing functionality.

Finally, there is still a huge demand for UI engineers, but companies need exceptional candidates.

For example, can you build functionality like Canva? Even Canva's founders waited a few years to find talent that could pull off that kind of engineering feat. Just to pique your curiosity, Canva utilizes advanced CSS Grid to achieve that.

In short, companies need UI talent that will obliterate the need for UI Engineers. Hmm..Kind of shooting yourself in the foot.