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I honestly think specializing in front or back end is a good thing. Sure, it does help to know both, but there's too much ground to cover for any one person to do well at all of it. I'm full-stack leaning towards front-end, and working on a personal project I know where the back-end is lacking. The front-end is pretty great but not as great as it could be if I could focus all my skill only on front-end.

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> there's too much ground to cover for any one person to do well at all of it.

If I can do it, others can do it, too. I even built an entire full-stack framework (w/ a custom components system + Node.js back-end), deployment system, database, and CSS framework (and now those all run my businesses). When I started, I didn't have the slightest clue beyond some basic HTML and CSS. I think people limit themselves too much trying to fit into the narrow containers of a job title/description. I get why, but it's worth asking yourself what else you're capable of beyond your job if you're eager to learn.

Just because someone can code front-end doesn't mean they can design good UX. One of the "full-stack" devs I work with who started as a back-end dev thinks rewriting a full WYSIWYG front-end system is fine to replace with a series of unstyled input boxes. He's pretty clueless about what our users want. He's asking me to explain to him why his solution is worse, when it should be extremely obvious. While he can code front-end, he doesn't really "get it" at all.

I've seen this way too often across my career.

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