This is not a new phenomenon, although I can certainly imagine it's gotten worse since the advent of LLMs.
Is a person who can do a WordPress install and extensively customize the theme via WYSIWYG tools a web developer, for example?
I've used the title "web developer" before with hesitation because I'm not at all a front-end guy. I understand CSS conceptually and the markup well enough to usually hack together what I want, but producing a very specific look and feel from a set of design guidelines is a little bit of a stretch for me. Even though I can talk to you all day about server configuration, backend frameworks, DNS, caching, certificates, etc., I always feel like I need to clarify that unless your front end needs are fairly basic, I'm going to need some help. But is that really necessary? Maybe I'm being overly prescriptive.
Well, the discussion isn't really about titles, as it is, about job descriptions.
Titles are important to HR departments, because they determine salary ranges from them (and sometimes, other perks).
Apple used to let their staff pick whatever title they wanted –Within limits, I'm sure (I saw some rather amusing business cards, in my time). I think they used a similar system to the government, internally (A numeric level system), to calculate salaries. Don't know if they still allow custom job titles (my money is on "no").
This is not a new type of argument. Whenever some force multiplier tech has arrived, there has been a struggle between the folks that are good at the new "multiplied" tech, and the ones that are really good at the older tech. Sort of a "John Henry" thing.
Companies usually pick the former. They get the same results, but faster/cheaper, and, when you are shipping, final results matter, and there are many factors in the "what matters" calculation.
So, if you can get a young PromptNinja, for a certain price, or a team of older CodeNinjas, how do you think the beancounters will go? Remember that buzzwords count, when you're shopping for funding and generating hype.
As an "older CodeNinja," I think it kinda sucks, but it's the reality of today's world. I have a lot of company, and our pool is getting bigger -fast.
I've been on the other side, as well. These days, I prefer hand-crafting my software, but I am quite aware that it isn't really valued, and that it would not be considered good ROI.
A verbose rewriting of an instance of "No True Scotsman".
If you use a legally described title, such as lawyer, MD, OD, electrician, or (in some US states and Canada) engineer, you either have the exact qualifications, or are committing fraud.
If you call yourself an unregulated title, such as web developer, rocket scientist, or landscaper, well, that's just like your opinion, man. And market forces will react; maybe by hiring you; maybe by spreading the word you don't deserve the title.
You're not defined by your output. A web developer doesn't just churn out code; a technical writer doesn't just write Markdown, and so on. Conflating deliverables with a craft is wrong.
I know web developers who just put together WordPress sites and that’s how it’s been for decades.
Words matter but you need a thousand of them. Someone could say they’re “into rock climbing” but that could mean they climb once a month or they’re obsessed and do it everyday. That’s why we go through interviews or have dates because everything has a certain hard-to-put-into-words nuance.
And that’s why I don’t really care how you use “web developer” as long as you get the general idea.
My biggest concern here would be false confidence in LLM code. I don't want someone to vibe code an application that takes in my password or PII if they don't know how to properly audit that code. I'm sure we've all seen the posts online about how "software engineering is dead, look what I did with Claude Code by myself", but I guarantee the serial-solopenuer that's posting that has at least a few security flaws in their application that will do harm to their customers.
And a trained dev can let those through as well, but I really doubt the rate is anywhere close to the same.
I have coworkers that trust their LLM code _way_ too much. It does some great stuff, but I always have to do at least a little bit of cleanup or fixing. The amount of trash AI code I've had to review is kind of upsetting.
Plus ça change! I started out in the "new media" industry in the late 90s and worked with a variety of "web designers" who didn't know how to code HTML or work with Web technologies at all, let alone upload anything. They had a good idea of the limitations but broadly "designed" things and handed them off to programmers to actually implement.
Lest anyone doesn't believe me, there was a BBC drama called Attachments which had a lot of London new media sceneish stuff going on in it and their team worked in a very similar way to real ones I was on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2rEFvlKA3g (NSFW as most post-watershed shows in 2000 were..)
I have an unusual job title, but it just means my employer can pay me less than the going rate for a dev-ops or data engineer, while massaging whatever my role encompasses to their current needs.
I think it's holding me back to be quite honest, and the lack of formal definition means there's also very little growth opportunity within the org.
It’s not meant to be contrary to the article, but I still think it’s relevant here, and, for better or worse, also true: People don’t care about your effort or how hard you’ve worked. People care about the outcomes and the results.
But you can't build a society on such a principle. Quickly people will stop investing in any long-term learning and everybody will be worse off for it.
Well, I think none of it is true, neither meritocracy neither ignoring it.
Instead, we have a society of marketing and sales. If you can convince someone you can do it, you get the job (both as an employee or as a contractor or as a firm).
As someone from the AEC industry (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) I've always maintained that there exists a scope of software engineering that meets the same criteria for the protection of life and property that 'Professional Engineers' are held to.
If writing software which carries the potential to harm the public required both a baseline assurance of competency (documented testing, experience, or education), as well as provisional restitution (insurance, licensing bond, or civil liability) administered by a neutral third party, than many less practitioners would take on the personal liability of representing themselves as such.
It's always amusing to go around the table on a call when it is attended by both the 'Digital Signage Sales Engineer' and the 'Structural Engineer of Record'. Although in reality, I doubt either of them actually care..
Before continuing to read the remainder of the 20-30 minute opinion piece, I visited the "About Me" part of the website and found an ironic blurb:
> I'm currently a Frontend Engineer at [XYZ] (I made the new logo, so I guess I'm technically still a designer, too).
So now I question if what set the author off on bluesky was also said in jest, otherwise his belittling sentiment toward "designers" is similar to his (justified) displeasure for the belittling sentiment towards web devs.
Either way, it is a pretty apparent when someone is inflating themselves with a title they don't deserve. The author is pretty apparently good at what he does and a master in the field but man, folks need to let comments they see on social media go. Imagine being a P5 and a P-20 made a belittling comment. Just go about your day and let your accolades speak for themselves.
It seems like an odd claim to make but it's not like we've collectively behaved well before. Is software engineering (and the bevy of construction metaphor titles) really earned?
Of course these LLM-dependent are not developers any more than being able to operate PowerPoint makes me a skilled orator or Word a bestselling author. Unless they're trying to waste your time in your hiring process, what does an idiot calling themselves a genius really matter? The truth will bare itself soon enough.
Terminology is not intrinsically good. If you are working with others towards a shared goal, then agreeing on terminology and having precise language is objectively good for everyone (assuming no one is secretly trying to sabotage the project). If you don't share any goals, then there is not even a coherent sense in which it could matter.
Talking with strangers on the internet almost always falls into the second category.
> My issue is this: The title of “web developer” implies a certain level of skill and knowledge that people who merely prompt their way to a website generally do not have. To call a prompter a web developer both elevates prompters and degrades web developers, in a way that, frankly, neither group deserves.
Implies to whom? There are many "web developers" who only know how to make WordPress websites, or Squarespace websites. At my old job at $MEGACORP, I worked alongside many "web developers" who really only knew how to configure SharePoint. Even basic HTML and CSS skills were scarce.
So yeah, I don't think LLMs have changed anything on this front. "Web developer" has never implied expertise to me. "Frontend engineer" perhaps slightly moreso, but even then you gotta really talk to the person to find out what they know or don't know.
I feel the author's pain but the title "web developer" has been so diluted over the last 20 years that it's not the right hill to die on. Long before there were agentic LLMs, people who couldn't effectively build new software were routinely called "web developers".
> If I call a plumber, and the guy who shows up doesn’t know anything except how to ask ChatGPT what to do, I will feel this person has misrepresented themselves.
This is essentially saying process matters (just as much or even more) than results. And I would say long term that is probably true, but in the short term it is often not the case. If I have a leak in my house I care not what the guy's title is. If they can fix it now, I'm happy. With a doctor I'd actually argue it is similar for emergency situations (which is why EMS are often not doctors), but in a long-term care situation it obviously becomes much more relevant. In essence, this just expresses a preference for that part of the market where interactions are less transactional and more about building lasting business relationships.
> I care because, frankly, those of us who do web development have worked damn hard to earn the proficiency we have, and we, like all other skilled laborers, deserve a measure of respect for our work.
Which is really no argument at all, because everybody deserves respect. Treating people differently because of titles is so backwards.
Someone afraid he's seeing commoditized the labor he sells by it, apparently. Past that I wouldn't really know, having only read the article.
For example:
> A web developer possesses applied expertise in the workings of the web[.]
> If you’d like my definition, I guess that heading is the closest I care to get. Nitpick it as broad, if you like; that’s somewhat on purpose.
So invited, I accept, only to immediately disappoint: the definition here isn't broad, nor indeed anything else, but facially incoherent.
What does it even mean to "possess applied expertise?" Is that double verb meant to denote, as when taken literally it does, "knowing how to do the thing that inheres in knowing how to do something?" Or is this sudden explosion of semantic complexity a symptom of the author's lack of success in reconciling his own doubts to himself? Which seems to you more likely?
edit: Then again, in the author's own colophons he describes himself variously as some combination of "frontend," "design[er]," and "engineer," though he is always very clear on his employer. Given he thus reveals a preference directly against describing himself by the term he defends, I now regard this article as likely sucker bait: why bother competing against people you can cozen into opting out on their own? And of course every fool loves to mistake a wall of punctilious typography for wisdom.
Trivially reframing a losing argument doesn't really help, especially since all you achieve by it here is to show you've never tried using a "handyman" or hyperlocal tweaker catalog app.
Oh, of course. And you personally verified their licensure, no doubt.
But the point is that there is licensure for electricians, who have maintained enough of a guild to defend the value - semantic, yes, but ultimately economic - of the term. That title matters the way this author wants "web developer" to, but "web developer" hasn't, doesn't, and never will again, and that's certainly not going to change in consequence of this author's fundamental misapprehension of genericization as a concept - not the legal principle with respect to trademark, but the underlying human behavior by whose recognition the establishment of that principle was informed.
edit: It doesn't improve the argument, either, to footnote in a refusal to defend it on its basis. If the claim holds for a role demanding no formal qualification, why defend it on the back of a comparison with a role which does so require? If the argument is that "web developer" should require qualification, why not say so outright? - preferably in about 2005, when it last would have had a chance to matter. Frankly I'm amazed this guy has been making a go of it for so long, but I guess he must have had to be a lot hungrier, to have stayed in a line I gave up now nearly 15 years ago for want of seeing any future there.
> Oh, of course. And you personally verified their licensure, no doubt.
Why would I have to verify the license? They do have the license, of course.
> who have maintained enough of a guild
Now I don't know where you are from, but in my country "software engineer" is a protected term. You can't call yourself anything including the term "engineer" unless you hold a bachelor degree or equivalent in (any) technical/STEM field. Yes, it's not "web developer", but it doesn't make a big difference for the sake of the argument.
Not equivalent. Being a web developer doesn’t require any credentials. Most web developers I know wouldn’t even be able to pass a basic CSS certification exam.
This is not a new phenomenon, although I can certainly imagine it's gotten worse since the advent of LLMs.
Is a person who can do a WordPress install and extensively customize the theme via WYSIWYG tools a web developer, for example?
I've used the title "web developer" before with hesitation because I'm not at all a front-end guy. I understand CSS conceptually and the markup well enough to usually hack together what I want, but producing a very specific look and feel from a set of design guidelines is a little bit of a stretch for me. Even though I can talk to you all day about server configuration, backend frameworks, DNS, caching, certificates, etc., I always feel like I need to clarify that unless your front end needs are fairly basic, I'm going to need some help. But is that really necessary? Maybe I'm being overly prescriptive.
Well, the discussion isn't really about titles, as it is, about job descriptions.
Titles are important to HR departments, because they determine salary ranges from them (and sometimes, other perks).
Apple used to let their staff pick whatever title they wanted –Within limits, I'm sure (I saw some rather amusing business cards, in my time). I think they used a similar system to the government, internally (A numeric level system), to calculate salaries. Don't know if they still allow custom job titles (my money is on "no").
This is not a new type of argument. Whenever some force multiplier tech has arrived, there has been a struggle between the folks that are good at the new "multiplied" tech, and the ones that are really good at the older tech. Sort of a "John Henry" thing.
Companies usually pick the former. They get the same results, but faster/cheaper, and, when you are shipping, final results matter, and there are many factors in the "what matters" calculation.
So, if you can get a young PromptNinja, for a certain price, or a team of older CodeNinjas, how do you think the beancounters will go? Remember that buzzwords count, when you're shopping for funding and generating hype.
As an "older CodeNinja," I think it kinda sucks, but it's the reality of today's world. I have a lot of company, and our pool is getting bigger -fast.
I've been on the other side, as well. These days, I prefer hand-crafting my software, but I am quite aware that it isn't really valued, and that it would not be considered good ROI.
A verbose rewriting of an instance of "No True Scotsman".
If you use a legally described title, such as lawyer, MD, OD, electrician, or (in some US states and Canada) engineer, you either have the exact qualifications, or are committing fraud.
If you call yourself an unregulated title, such as web developer, rocket scientist, or landscaper, well, that's just like your opinion, man. And market forces will react; maybe by hiring you; maybe by spreading the word you don't deserve the title.
You're not defined by your output. A web developer doesn't just churn out code; a technical writer doesn't just write Markdown, and so on. Conflating deliverables with a craft is wrong.
A pilot doesn't just fly the plane. But can you be a pilot if you don't fly the plane?
It’s even more nuanced than that.
You could pilot a crewed vehicle without a license, but that is, usually, not lawful. You might not be a pilot, but you would be piloting.
You are a pilot if you have a license, and you usually cannot obtain a license without having flown a plane with instructional personnel.
In some places you may pilot a drone for which you don’t have to maintain a license or registration.
I know web developers who just put together WordPress sites and that’s how it’s been for decades.
Words matter but you need a thousand of them. Someone could say they’re “into rock climbing” but that could mean they climb once a month or they’re obsessed and do it everyday. That’s why we go through interviews or have dates because everything has a certain hard-to-put-into-words nuance.
And that’s why I don’t really care how you use “web developer” as long as you get the general idea.
My biggest concern here would be false confidence in LLM code. I don't want someone to vibe code an application that takes in my password or PII if they don't know how to properly audit that code. I'm sure we've all seen the posts online about how "software engineering is dead, look what I did with Claude Code by myself", but I guarantee the serial-solopenuer that's posting that has at least a few security flaws in their application that will do harm to their customers.
And a trained dev can let those through as well, but I really doubt the rate is anywhere close to the same.
I have coworkers that trust their LLM code _way_ too much. It does some great stuff, but I always have to do at least a little bit of cleanup or fixing. The amount of trash AI code I've had to review is kind of upsetting.
It's about honesty and professionalism, whatever tool you use.
Plus ça change! I started out in the "new media" industry in the late 90s and worked with a variety of "web designers" who didn't know how to code HTML or work with Web technologies at all, let alone upload anything. They had a good idea of the limitations but broadly "designed" things and handed them off to programmers to actually implement.
Lest anyone doesn't believe me, there was a BBC drama called Attachments which had a lot of London new media sceneish stuff going on in it and their team worked in a very similar way to real ones I was on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2rEFvlKA3g (NSFW as most post-watershed shows in 2000 were..)
I have an unusual job title, but it just means my employer can pay me less than the going rate for a dev-ops or data engineer, while massaging whatever my role encompasses to their current needs.
I think it's holding me back to be quite honest, and the lack of formal definition means there's also very little growth opportunity within the org.
It’s not meant to be contrary to the article, but I still think it’s relevant here, and, for better or worse, also true: People don’t care about your effort or how hard you’ve worked. People care about the outcomes and the results.
But you can't build a society on such a principle. Quickly people will stop investing in any long-term learning and everybody will be worse off for it.
I guess you are being sarcastic, but yes, this is how stuff works.
Well, I think none of it is true, neither meritocracy neither ignoring it.
Instead, we have a society of marketing and sales. If you can convince someone you can do it, you get the job (both as an employee or as a contractor or as a firm).
Okay, but I don't want any "software engineers" calling themselves engineer unless they have a 4 year degree and liability insurance.
As someone from the AEC industry (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) I've always maintained that there exists a scope of software engineering that meets the same criteria for the protection of life and property that 'Professional Engineers' are held to.
If writing software which carries the potential to harm the public required both a baseline assurance of competency (documented testing, experience, or education), as well as provisional restitution (insurance, licensing bond, or civil liability) administered by a neutral third party, than many less practitioners would take on the personal liability of representing themselves as such.
It's always amusing to go around the table on a call when it is attended by both the 'Digital Signage Sales Engineer' and the 'Structural Engineer of Record'. Although in reality, I doubt either of them actually care..
Before continuing to read the remainder of the 20-30 minute opinion piece, I visited the "About Me" part of the website and found an ironic blurb:
> I'm currently a Frontend Engineer at [XYZ] (I made the new logo, so I guess I'm technically still a designer, too).
So now I question if what set the author off on bluesky was also said in jest, otherwise his belittling sentiment toward "designers" is similar to his (justified) displeasure for the belittling sentiment towards web devs.
Either way, it is a pretty apparent when someone is inflating themselves with a title they don't deserve. The author is pretty apparently good at what he does and a master in the field but man, folks need to let comments they see on social media go. Imagine being a P5 and a P-20 made a belittling comment. Just go about your day and let your accolades speak for themselves.
Amusing that author of "titles matter" describes himself with a pretend "engineer" title.
It seems like an odd claim to make but it's not like we've collectively behaved well before. Is software engineering (and the bevy of construction metaphor titles) really earned?
Of course these LLM-dependent are not developers any more than being able to operate PowerPoint makes me a skilled orator or Word a bestselling author. Unless they're trying to waste your time in your hiring process, what does an idiot calling themselves a genius really matter? The truth will bare itself soon enough.
Terminology is not intrinsically good. If you are working with others towards a shared goal, then agreeing on terminology and having precise language is objectively good for everyone (assuming no one is secretly trying to sabotage the project). If you don't share any goals, then there is not even a coherent sense in which it could matter.
Talking with strangers on the internet almost always falls into the second category.
> My issue is this: The title of “web developer” implies a certain level of skill and knowledge that people who merely prompt their way to a website generally do not have. To call a prompter a web developer both elevates prompters and degrades web developers, in a way that, frankly, neither group deserves.
Implies to whom? There are many "web developers" who only know how to make WordPress websites, or Squarespace websites. At my old job at $MEGACORP, I worked alongside many "web developers" who really only knew how to configure SharePoint. Even basic HTML and CSS skills were scarce.
So yeah, I don't think LLMs have changed anything on this front. "Web developer" has never implied expertise to me. "Frontend engineer" perhaps slightly moreso, but even then you gotta really talk to the person to find out what they know or don't know.
I feel the author's pain but the title "web developer" has been so diluted over the last 20 years that it's not the right hill to die on. Long before there were agentic LLMs, people who couldn't effectively build new software were routinely called "web developers".
Someone who makes websites with wordpress is also a web developer.
I see only 2 real arguments (actually only 1):
> If I call a plumber, and the guy who shows up doesn’t know anything except how to ask ChatGPT what to do, I will feel this person has misrepresented themselves.
This is essentially saying process matters (just as much or even more) than results. And I would say long term that is probably true, but in the short term it is often not the case. If I have a leak in my house I care not what the guy's title is. If they can fix it now, I'm happy. With a doctor I'd actually argue it is similar for emergency situations (which is why EMS are often not doctors), but in a long-term care situation it obviously becomes much more relevant. In essence, this just expresses a preference for that part of the market where interactions are less transactional and more about building lasting business relationships.
> I care because, frankly, those of us who do web development have worked damn hard to earn the proficiency we have, and we, like all other skilled laborers, deserve a measure of respect for our work.
Which is really no argument at all, because everybody deserves respect. Treating people differently because of titles is so backwards.
Who's proud to be called a "web developer?"
Who's ashamed of it?
Someone afraid he's seeing commoditized the labor he sells by it, apparently. Past that I wouldn't really know, having only read the article.
For example:
> A web developer possesses applied expertise in the workings of the web[.]
> If you’d like my definition, I guess that heading is the closest I care to get. Nitpick it as broad, if you like; that’s somewhat on purpose.
So invited, I accept, only to immediately disappoint: the definition here isn't broad, nor indeed anything else, but facially incoherent.
What does it even mean to "possess applied expertise?" Is that double verb meant to denote, as when taken literally it does, "knowing how to do the thing that inheres in knowing how to do something?" Or is this sudden explosion of semantic complexity a symptom of the author's lack of success in reconciling his own doubts to himself? Which seems to you more likely?
edit: Then again, in the author's own colophons he describes himself variously as some combination of "frontend," "design[er]," and "engineer," though he is always very clear on his employer. Given he thus reveals a preference directly against describing himself by the term he defends, I now regard this article as likely sucker bait: why bother competing against people you can cozen into opting out on their own? And of course every fool loves to mistake a wall of punctilious typography for wisdom.
"Titles matter"
If so can we kindly stop with the "software engineer" bullshit.
(Go ahead with the downvotes, I know this crowd loves nonsensical self aggrandizing "engineer" titles)
I wasn't going to downvote you until I got to the third sentence. No need to be a prick.
This is a losing argument. No one cares if it’s aubergine, outside of a small group, it’s purple.
So I can show up at my neighbours door as an electrician and fix stuff by asking ChatGPT? As long as it works and nobody notices?
Trivially reframing a losing argument doesn't really help, especially since all you achieve by it here is to show you've never tried using a "handyman" or hyperlocal tweaker catalog app.
> you've never tried using a "handyman" or hyperlocal tweaker catalog app.
I did. But those are trained electricians of course.
Oh, of course. And you personally verified their licensure, no doubt.
But the point is that there is licensure for electricians, who have maintained enough of a guild to defend the value - semantic, yes, but ultimately economic - of the term. That title matters the way this author wants "web developer" to, but "web developer" hasn't, doesn't, and never will again, and that's certainly not going to change in consequence of this author's fundamental misapprehension of genericization as a concept - not the legal principle with respect to trademark, but the underlying human behavior by whose recognition the establishment of that principle was informed.
edit: It doesn't improve the argument, either, to footnote in a refusal to defend it on its basis. If the claim holds for a role demanding no formal qualification, why defend it on the back of a comparison with a role which does so require? If the argument is that "web developer" should require qualification, why not say so outright? - preferably in about 2005, when it last would have had a chance to matter. Frankly I'm amazed this guy has been making a go of it for so long, but I guess he must have had to be a lot hungrier, to have stayed in a line I gave up now nearly 15 years ago for want of seeing any future there.
> Oh, of course. And you personally verified their licensure, no doubt.
Why would I have to verify the license? They do have the license, of course.
> who have maintained enough of a guild
Now I don't know where you are from, but in my country "software engineer" is a protected term. You can't call yourself anything including the term "engineer" unless you hold a bachelor degree or equivalent in (any) technical/STEM field. Yes, it's not "web developer", but it doesn't make a big difference for the sake of the argument.
Not equivalent. Being a web developer doesn’t require any credentials. Most web developers I know wouldn’t even be able to pass a basic CSS certification exam.
"as long as it works and no one notices" then yes, yes you can!
I ain't reading all that, but I'm not asking an AI to summarize it for me either