How to Succeed at Front-end Development

February 27, 2008

Front-end fixer Stephanie Sullivan is the co-author of Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 (New Riders), co-lead of The Web Standards Project (WaSP) Adobe Task Force, and one of twelve great speakers appearing at An Event Apart New Orleans on April 24–25.

Q: You’ve worn many hats, but for the past few years you’ve focused on markup and code to the exclusion of design, architecture, copy, and so on. How does a coder survive and thrive in this market? What value do you bring to every job that makes people want to hire you above others? What’s your secret?

To answer the last part about value first, I write very clean, succinct code. I’m fast and efficient. Many companies I work for don’t have someone on staff that can create the semantic, accessible, standards-based markup they need. Blogs on advanced techniques and bug-busting ideas abound, but many people writing CSS still need to understand the basic principles. Their employer may require them to wear so many development hats that they haven’t had time to learn how to properly apply foundational principles to create solid structures for their content.

The companies that hire me, however, understand the value both to their bottom line in development and maintenance hours, and to their clients’ bandwidth savings and search engine placement. I’m contracted at times to oversee the plan for a project and advise on semantics and accessibility—to take code already written and make it more succinct and efficient, or to troubleshoot a challenge that has developed. I also train larger companies’ web departments to do what I do. I get great joy from helping people “get it.” To me, there’s nothing better than to watch that “aha” moment!

As you said, I’ve worn many hats, dabbled and learned about a variety of web technologies over the years. But I decided quite a while back that the key for me is to specialize in the things I enjoy and to have a network of people that specialize in the things I do not.

When a job comes directly to my company, I project manage, pull the subcontractors I need together for the copy (so important for SEO), user interface (the part many clients don’t want to pay for), design (which I refuse to do anymore since I’m a terrible tweakaholic—my time is better spent in art direction) and back-end development (which even front-end developers must understand, if only communicate scope to their back-end developer partners). I do the front-end development myself (partially because I’m a bit of a control freak). It’s important for me to understand the technologies that are available, to keep up with where the web is going and what’s possible, so the job can be properly planned. I don’t believe it’s important for me to master every technology (although I am currently adding JavaScript to my list of tricks).

All that said, my preference is still the simplicity of subcontracting for, or doing training in, other companies. I work “part-time, as needed” for two different companies. For one, I create the front-end for all their ColdFusion applications. The other, Miskeeto, is best described as a consortium. We are several developers, each with our own roles and talents, working together to help non-profits. We’re even carbon-neutral (although Robert Hoekman, Jr., our founder, accuses me of creating the biggest part of that expense through all my travel).

Finally, I’d guess the secret to my surviving and thriving relates to networking, being proficient and determined (yet fun), and never knowing when to turn off the lights at night. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (my social water cooler of choice) realizes that, if I’m not on the road, at least 14 hours of my day is spent coding and talking to the little people inside my computer. I’m a horrible workaholic. But I love what I do more than anything—except maybe beach volleyball and my boyfriend.