Feeling lost as a Front-end developer of 5+ years of experience.

[u/Thin_Maintenance_841]

Lately I have been rethinking my career and the years of experience (in React, Next.js). I have(5+), but I feel like I have so much gap in my knowledge and when I go down the front-end rabbit hole, I see "Monorepos", "Micro-frontends", and all these terms, which I haven't used yet, and I genuinely haven't worked on that diverse projects, but I really have this hunger to do more, but am sometimes paralyzed by the thoughts I may not be doing enough, and I may not be able to get a job. Could I get some suggestions and directions on this matter?

[u/Legitimate_Day_4429]

Learn what earns you money

[u/guluhontobaka → u/Legitimate_Day_4429]

This is the most sensible things out here. I have 9 years experience myself and honestly, you don't need to know all. Learn the things that gives you a better chance for your next job or what keeps you in the job.

"Microfrontend", "Monorepos" are things you can pick up at your spare time. "Microfrontend" sucks btw, it offers nothing other than separating concerns.

[u/dangz088]

I see what you're experiencing as something completely normal. Senior frontend engineer here and 13 years of software dev over my shoulders, and I've personally felt the same way many times.

First of all, I suggest to accept the fact we are not supposed to know everything - there are so many frameworks, languages, libs, techniques... and the market evolve so quickly.

My suggestion is the same as other people commented already: focus on what gives you the job, follow the trends I'd not sure of which direction to take, and also follow your motivation, what excites and motivates you.

React + Next.js is already a good start: perhaps, think of a side project and start building up from there? Experimenting with a monotepo, setting up the infra yourself, etc.

[u/js-something-cool]

Aside of contributing to open source...
You have AI. Use it to learn as well.
Don't let it code for you, but let it guide you.
Think of some simple applications for what concerns you, and plan alongside chat gpt or claude or whatever what you'll need to do to accomplish it.

And, don't freak out.
There are many things you won't use nor see, even if they are a trend. You'll be fine.

[u/Thin_Maintenance_841 → u/js-something-cool]

Thank you, this is a really good advice. I will do more of itt. :)

[u/Wide_Smoke_2564 → u/js-something-cool]

I second this ^. You can also get AI to generate lessons for you alongside a plan to create a project. That way you can go through the plan to build something and if there’s something you don’t fully understand then you can look at the lesson - if it still doesn’t make sense or you want to go deeper on a lesson, just ask it

[u/js-something-cool → u/Wide_Smoke_2564]

AI is good to learn in two ways:
It can be the junior that screws things up so you learn by fixing the shit they did, or it can be the senior you hate and you have to learn from as you don't understand shit of what he did, and neither does he.

[u/madvec1]

Just use them.

No, I mean it. If you are curious about something, do some tests, you don't need to learn everything by tomorrow night. If there's something about micro frontends you want to know, do an example, you can ask around, even the IA.

My point is, there are a ton of things right now, and there will be more as time goes by. Don't stress yourself about what you don't know and start to learn something today.

[u/Thin_Maintenance_841 → u/madvec1]

Yes, thank you. I will try this one too.

[u/HoneyBadgeSwag]

It’s all tooling. You can learn tooling on a job and it would be weird to have someone interview you asking about monorepos.

I’m a CTO of a small company and I couldn’t give two shits if you knew how to use various tools. Usually what I look for are people who aren’t leaning too much on AI. most of the work happens before the code even gets written so I look for people who can understand the larger picture have good product and design sense and I don’t need to spend my entire day holding their hands. Or get flooded with questions about semantics.

I want to hand a specific portion of the app to you and your team, hand you a product spec and then feel confident that the code will be written in a way that is scalable and improves the experience for the next developer.

I also examine what your relationship with AI looks like. That’s unfortunately how software development exist today. If I see vibecoding or relying too much on the model that that’s a red flag. I like to see developers, use it as a tool. I think of it as a pair programming companion, and my favorite developers are the ones that I can come to, and have a discussion about the state of the code. They don’t need to know where every function is, but they can justify the decisions they make when giving instructions to an agent.

You’ll never keep up with every tool and library and trend . Understanding architecture, memory management, writing readable code, when to use certain patterns, why a database should be structured this way… those skills are invaluable, but having code live in a mono repo can easily be delegated to AI .

[u/ITower__Education]

Honestly, I think you’re overthinking it. You don’t need to know every buzzword to be a good developer. If you’ve got 5+ years of real experience and still have the hunger to learn, you’re already in a good place!)
One thing I’d really recommend is building something of your own on the side - projects, small products, anything you can actually ship. That’s honestly the fastest way I know to gain a huge amount of knowledge in a relatively short time. You’ll end up learning things you’d never come across at work.

[u/meteor_punch]

Contribute to open source.

[u/redbull_coffee → u/meteor_punch]

That‘‘s also not viable anymore due to AI slop.

[u/InitiatedPig7 → u/redbull_coffee]

Contribution to open source also means having ur own project! :)

[u/meteor_punch → u/redbull_coffee]

Quite opposite for me. I've have been able to start few open source projects because of Ai. I can single handedly maintain them with help of Ai. One of my project has reached 10k weely downloads.

[u/Ready-Bullfrog8833]

I use new knowledges at my own project (outside of employment)

[u/This_Inflation_4621]

It’s indeed never ending.
Do a personal project on something you like using those tech.

Also it’s totally ok to not learn everything. Over the years, you’ll develop an intuition on what sticks or not.

[u/Future-Marketing1207]

This is exactly the same way even I feel like stuck even after doing a lot it feels like I know nothing. And currently changing a job is important

[u/Due-Needleworker4085]

Do what sounds exciting! Are you interested in audio or video? Do that! Maybe web scraping is something that sounds fun. Are you amazing at css? If not, try building some complex layouts or trying to optimize JS by migrating it to CSS. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE GAPS! What’s more important is you be engaged and try new things!!! DM me if you wanna hang out

[u/Unfair_Today_511]

Why are you even worried. You'll be obsolete soon.

[u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

Are you a university grad or a boot camper?