Why Front-End Engineers Are Hard to Find and How to Succeed Today

In this open letter, front‑end expert Kejun Zhang reflects on the current shortage of front‑end engineers, tracing the shift from browser‑centric development to mobile‑first and the resulting talent drain.

He notes that HTML/CSS/JavaScript remain essential, especially with the commercial value of H5, and argues that the “spring” for front‑end development is returning.

He distinguishes three roles in the front‑end community: front‑end engineers (professional developers), front‑end developers (open‑source contributors and freelancers), and “play‑for‑fun” enthusiasts, emphasizing that only engineers have a product‑focused, career‑oriented responsibility.

Drawing from his experience at Douban, he describes how building a universal tooling team helped decouple business code and improve development efficiency, highlighting the importance of infrastructure, collaboration, and a “craftsman spirit”.

He advises newcomers to focus on practical application ability, product and design thinking, and to embrace rapid tool changes while grounding themselves in stable fundamentals such as CSS2.1, JavaScript basics, and enduring development concepts like separation of concerns.

Finally, he stresses continuous learning, humility, and the value of contributing to projects to gain real‑world experience, warning against chasing hype without solving concrete problems.