The titles of my previous articles, "Web3 is the Future for Front-end Engineers Part 1" and "Web3 is the Future for Front-end Engineers Part 2", might seem sensationalist, and some have accused me of clickbait. However, these articles are about my personal journey of transitioning to becoming a Web3 full-stack engineer. The phrase "Web2 is the End, Web3 is the Future" reflects my personal experience and choice, not a summary of the industry or advice for others—this article is the opposite.
Web2 is the End
After reading those two articles, some people commented, "You never explained why Web2 is the end". Indeed, those articles were mainly about my personal experience and not career advice for the industry.
Additionally, I had previously expressed my views on "Web2 being outdated" more comprehensively. There was a small part in "The Last Advice to Front-end Engineers", and more details were in a paid column article titled "What Kind of Job Should I Look For?".
To ensure the coherence and completeness of this series of articles, I am now sharing the main content from the paid article, further refined below.
Supply and Demand Mismatch
Last Mid-Autumn Festival, while I was idly chatting with my friend, I opened BOSS Zhipin to check out job opportunities. I set a higher expected monthly salary range and specified my areas of expertise. To my surprise, the usual abundance of basic coding positions had mostly disappeared. Instead, I saw job titles like Web IDE Development, Senior Electron Development, Front-end Technology Director, and Front-end Team Leader—more advanced positions.
Their combined monthly salary range was approximately 35k to 70k, which sounded great! However, upon seeing the job requirements, I realized I didn't meet them.
Some people complain about the difficulty of finding jobs, citing saturated demand, while others lament the difficulty of hiring, saying that suitable candidates are rare. At that moment, I truly understood the contradictions and gaps between these two perspectives.
In the conventional job market, I found myself in an awkward position—neither suitable for basic coding roles (which would be an underutilization of my skills and thus not cost-effective for employers) nor qualified to lead a large-scale team.
This was one aspect of the problem I faced when job hunting. The other aspect was the issue of career prospects, which affects the stability of job positions, companies, and industries (i.e., their lifecycle).
Is Front-end Dead?
When I was organizing a topic on front-end engineering, I emphasized in the introduction—
"A 'front-end engineer' is a 'software engineer' who primarily uses Web front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to solve problems related to web pages or web-based applications. If someone uses Canvas, WebGL, and other technologies for drawing or game development, they have already stepped beyond the conventional scope of 'Web front-end.' Their knowledge system focuses more on computer graphics, which is not within the scope of this topic".
—Ourai, Front-end Engineer's Self-cultivation
In a Zhihu Q&A about Yu Bo's resignation, Tang Zhu mentioned—
"A new era is coming, driven by AI, with significant upgrades in technological productivity, major reconstructions in product expression, and reshaping of business models. As one of the functions of technical implementation, front-end engineering will also enter a new era. The value of the user experience technology carried by front-end will be more widely recognized and become a basic consensus among people.
Yu Bo was ahead of his time in cognition, founded, and successfully built Ant Group's Experience Technology Department. The achievements in concepts, products, teams, influence, and business value are substantial.
Yu Bo became famous in front-end and achieved a lot in terms of technical products and the Experience Technology Department. In the next industry cycle, I believe Yu Bo still has the ability, space, and sufficient talent to make something better and promote change, succeeding in business and commerce.
However, the so-called 'problems' of front-end are mostly due to limited cognition. In the new era driven by AI productivity, the new challenges of interaction and user experience delivery may just be the beginning of the 'front-end's' brilliance. This definitely does not mean that it will continue to be fully contained within the familiar 2D web pages in browsers".
—Tang Zhu, How to View Yu Bo's Resignation from Ant Experience Technology Department?
Combining these two perspectives, I was reminded of the heated debate about "front-end engineering being dead" last year.
I had expressed my views on this topic in 2020 in a Zhihu question, "Does Front-end Have a Future?", and later wrote a more detailed article titled "Does Front-end Development Have A Future?".
A year later, I added some more thoughts—
"In 5 to 10 years, there will be a significant number of tool-like job positions in Web development that become obsolete. The entry barrier will be higher, and salaries and growth rates will be lower. People who have been in the industry for more than six years should be able to sense this.
This profession is already on a downward trend. It's time to consider what you will do in 5 to 10 years and try to change direction and switch tracks as soon as possible.
I want to say that—Web development-related professions, such as front-end engineers and Java engineers, are nearing their end. It doesn't mean there will be no jobs, but they will become increasingly difficult to find and will pay less, moving further away from the term 'high-paying.'
Twenty years ago, China entered the PC Internet era; ten years ago, China and the world entered the mobile Internet era. During these two decades, with the rapid growth of various Internet companies, China's economy quickly rose and soared, catching up with and surpassing other countries.
However, at this stage, many things are in a plateau phase. In ten years, no matter how the form of the Internet changes, Web development will not cause much of a stir and will have little to do with it.
Currently, the future lies in data intelligence, mixed reality, graphical technology, computing combined with biology/life sciences, and some infrastructure areas. Relatively speaking, Web development is just some 'bricklayer' work.
Any tool-like thing (such as technology, service, etc.) has a shelf life, so maximizing the benefits and value they generate is crucial.
I've shared the basic points I've thought of, and whether you can use them is up to you—
Access to first-hand information and a keen sense of smell—being one or even N steps ahead of most people in understanding the development of the world and the challenges you may face, as well as potential money-making opportunities;
Rapid learning ability—reducing the time cost of mastering new tools and saving more time to gain value;
A discerning eye for finding applicable and landing scenarios for tools—quickly and vigorously promoting them to get promoted, get a raise, and make money;
Try to expand as much as possible—increasing and extending profits;
Start the next cycle."
—Ourai's Thoughts
The section "A Bit of Reflection" in the article "The Second Year of My Three-Year Journey" further refined the above views and echoed this year's "The Last Advice to Front-end Engineers".
Later, I reviewed the articles and ideas mentioned above, as well as Zenany's article "The Future of Front-end" written in 2019, trying to find entry points for job hunting.
The Cycle of Technology
Whether it is Zenany's "The Future of Front-end", my "Does Front-end Development Have A Future?", or Tang Zhu's answer on Zhihu, they all indicate that "front-end has a future", but this "front-end" is not the same as the traditional "front-end"—
If you cling to the "traditional Web front-end" represented by HTML, CSS, and JS, it will not have a future in the long run. However, the "front-end" that aims to "solve human-computer interaction problems" and "provide a good user experience" does have a future.
The difference between these two "front-ends" lies in the fact that the former is bound to HTML, CSS, and JS, which are frequently used in development; while the
latter's connotation is dynamic and can be the old trio, WebGL, or even something completely unrelated to Web.
For example, the "front-end" involved in digital twins, immersive technologies, and smart spaces has almost nothing to do with the "traditional Web front-end".
If we follow the 15-year cycle of front-end development mentioned in Tang Zhu's answer (2008–2023), it is clear that the "traditional Web front-end" is currently in a period of decline and doesn't have many years left to "live".
What will the "next generation" of "front-end" be specifically in terms of technology? How long will its lifecycle be? Will it be as enduring as the "traditional Web front-end"?
Additionally, generational transitions do not occur separately but simultaneously, with few people noticing; by the time most people become aware and take action, it may already be too late to get in on the ground floor.
The Cycle of Domains
These articles also suggest that "front-end" can develop in both the production and commercial fields—improving efficiency and reducing costs in the former, and expanding territory and generating revenue in the latter.
As software engineering theories become more refined, the problems encountered when using new technologies and tools can easily be solved by drawing on existing knowledge and experience (across boundaries).
Thus, the "spiral" in the "spiral upward" will spin faster and faster, to the point where it doesn't matter whether it's a spiral or not—similar problems keep recurring, and as long as the models and patterns for solving problems remain unchanged, improvements in technology and tools will be meaningless.
In other words, the ceiling for efficiency and optimization is becoming easier to reach.
The commercial field is similar—commerce is based on human nature, which has not changed much in thousands of years. It's just that with the emergence of new technologies, everything existing has been redone once again—another "spiral upward".
Of course, there are a few "exceptions", such as the advent of electrical appliances and computers, which are "singularity" events.
From past experience, it's hard to say which cycle is longer between production and commerce, but the decline of the production field may accompany the decline of a specific technology—"if the 'traditional Web front-end' is no longer used, why bother with its infrastructure?"
The Limitations of Articles
These articles are written from a macro perspective and offer advice for a broad audience. For a specific individual, the reference value may be limited—just as with the societal issue of "old jobs disappearing and new ones emerging".
Take me, for example. I am older and at a generational transition point. The technologies I am proficient in are from the "old era", while the specific technologies of the "new era" are still unclear, with high learning barriers and long cycles to reach a workable level.
From the perspective of employers, they tend to hire people with practical work experience and proven results. As someone who has just "switched careers", should I be an intern? If they are hiring interns, why not choose someone who is both young and obedient?
Web3 is the Destination
To summarize the above briefly—
The mainstream human-computer interaction technology in the future is likely no longer HTML, CSS, and JS. Even if it is still them, it will no longer be important or will be unrecognizable compared to now, equivalent to learning new technologies and mastering more hardcore foundational knowledge such as computer graphics.
The knowledge related to new technologies has a high learning threshold, and it takes a long cycle to reach a workable level; it is unclear how long the generational transition will take, but it should only be a few years. The sooner you step into the "new era", the better.
In recent years, the growth of the traditional Internet industry has been lackluster, as everyone can see. Most front-end engineers are proficient in the "old era" technology of "traditional Web front-end" and work in business-oriented companies.
If you still limit your vision to Web2, from the perspective of the technology cycle and the cycles of production and commerce, the future is easily foreseeable and only has a few years left to "live". Although working for a technology-oriented company is not a bad choice and can prolong the status quo for a while, this option is only available to a minority of technical elites and has little to do with the vast majority of business front-end developers whose technical skills are not advanced.
For these front-end engineers, especially those who have been in the industry for more than five years, the "traditional Web front-end" technology, which is from the "old era", has become a historical burden that is hard to shake off. Continuing to stay in Web2 will soon lead to the end of their career paths.
In "Questioning Web3, Understanding Web3", I provided a detailed description of my understanding of "Web3". Anyone who is not foolish can see that even with only the "traditional Web front-end" skills, it is quite smooth to transition from Web2.
Moreover, given the current stage of Web3 industry development, it can extend the career lifeline of front-end engineers who rely on "traditional Web front-end" by at least another ten years. Calling Web3 the "destination" for these engineers is not an exaggeration, right?
Conclusion
Since I started writing articles about Web3, some people have commented that decentralization, blockchain, and Web3 are illegal. When asked to cite specific laws and regulations, they fall silent.
I would like to ask: "In China, blockchain technology is applied by government agencies and major Internet companies. Are they openly breaking the law? Or are they simply unaware of the law?"
The wise adapt to the times, and the clever adapt to the situation.
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