as a interviewer myself I'm starting to get fedup with those who claim to be full stack developer.

when asked about front end, angular and node js in particular they may be able to answer, switch to api be it Json or soap  then ah ah ah already.. prob further into backend pure java... giving me question mark face... further into database design.. oh i know nothing just rely on hibernate.

please never put in your resume or claim yourself as a full stack developer if you are not.. don't be ashamed if u r a backend guy just say your expertise is more towards this area.. if it's front end angular, node, or JavaScript just say so.. cause the moment u place in your full stack be prepared you may not be able to answer alot of questions if you are not doing them in depth.

@TS start coding. start your journey don't worry about full stack of not learn as you go.. be truthful to yourself. no experience in it say you do not have. don't claim you are full stack. just to master a backend java development it may take you at least 3-5 years. the complexity isn't only to make an application work.

What area of engineering were you studying? Generally I feel the rigour and complexity of engineering courses will give you a leg up against most IT grads. If you did any form of computing engineer (e.g. knowing how computers work at the hardware level), you'll outpace most IT grads. So don't be disheartened with your engineering degree. Programming is mostly problem solving, how you think and come up with a solution is often more important than knowing how to write it in the way the machine understands, the latter can be figured out quickly.

Also, full stack is not just front-end and backend, its kinda a bit of everything from the stack. That also includes server setup, build integrations, etc.

Electronics, but my major is closer to material science of electronics device. I did learn 0/1 binary, logic gates and circuit design, do you mean these? Learnt a bit of Machine Language for microcontrollers too.

I'm just going to focus front-end for now haha, see how it goes

Yeap, that knowledge will be more useful in backend work, frontend too but probably not as much. You'd be surprised how many people don't know how computers work at the low level, how memory is used, accessed, interrupts, cpu polling, etc. When you don't know these things and problems occur, you don't have an intuition of what could be wrong.

i asked my colleagues if they understand stuff like big O notation, architecture instruction set, hexademical, ASCII,  they reply me "whats that " . I was not asking them to test them but rather hoping i can get a clearer explanation for myself.

Not that web dev will never need to use any of these stuff in their job. But web dev dont actually need to have in depth knowledge of how computer works.

If you're a web dev without that intuition, you will write bad code. You don't need it, but you'll never go far without some basic understanding. I recently just rewrote some sql queries that was taking 5 minutes to execute, down to 13 seconds, all because I understand at a basic level how the db engine will need to allocate memory to process the data.

Its also not uncommon to see large objects/variables being passed around in crappy web dev code, unnecessarily consuming memory when you could easily pass a file pointer reference instead. Not understanding I/O and race conditions, etc. etc.

End up, someone else will have to clean up their mess.

ask yourself, where is your passion??

passion is overrated. mainly because it burns bright, and burning bright also means burning out quick. and passion unchecked can lead down the wrong path too.

I was at a forum with a bunch of entrepreneurs once, when all of the panelists spoke about passion, etc. except for the very last person, Pua Khein-Seng, one of the ppl attributed to the USB flash drive. He said a totally different thing. He asked a very important question, which is, can you expect your passion to be burning bright all the time, though the many years, through the many ups and downs? Rather, it's the sense of responsibility to his company and employees being the main thing that kept him going all these years.

for me , i think either one , want to be fullstack is so difficult , and every year browser have update new function , and css function become more and more complicated every year eg mix-blend-mode recently can mix so many complicated layer , javascript update new function es5 until now es11 have change so much , for me i will rather pick 1 side , ether front end or back end , the function increase and change everyyear like dictionary  , you cannot stop study , and always google . this kind if web developement thing is like team work , you cant finish one complicated project by ur own , better focus only on one side

browser update too fast everyyear , front end just css + svg can take forever to learn already , this is eg some sifu making with css only , all is render by ur moden browser https://codepen.io/SoyEva/pen/LRjWzZ

I believe training and staying up to date to be part of your working hours when not working freelance, at least in the west, it's widely accepted, i wonder how it goes in Malaysia ?

it's more to do with the nature of the job itself, rather than geographical location.

if you're maintaining a legacy in house CRM system, then you're pretty much stuck. such jobs exists both east or west. even north or south too.

I believe there's great disparities between geographical locations, if only in term of respect for other people's welfare and dignity, Malaysia is definitely inferior in this regard given the pervasive memanjing/dengki ke/arrogant culture that spans from primary school to the kings, ministers, and the like.
But can't you end up finishing your day's work at 3 pm if you play your cards well ? Or at least negotiate a good raise, since your expertise has high value for the company ?

Sometimes I feel that I most of my skills are unnecessary today, because things like Figma and WordPress exist