What a 10-Year Front-End Veteran Unemployed for a Year Should Do, According to a Career 1v1 Session

Hello everyone, I'm Shuangyue. Author of wangEditor, former senior front-end engineer at Baidu and Didi, elite instructor at Muke Academy, PMP, and author of Frontend Interview School.

I've been running a "Programmer 1v1 Interview Series" where I chat 1-on-1 via WeChat voice or text, sharing your situation and confusion, and I give advice. Below is the main content of the 13th participant (no sensitive personal information), shared for everyone's reference.

Basic Info

• Female
• City: Nanjing
• Married: Y
• Education: Bachelor's degree
• Years of work: 10 years
• Company size: Medium
• Employment status: No, unemployed for over a year (had a baby)
• Role: Front-end
• Industry: Network security

Late in her pregnancy, she negotiated a departure with her company because they were relocating offices, received some compensation, and went home to prepare for childbirth.

This spring, she prepared her resume and had a few interview opportunities, but didn't succeed. She stopped afterward and hasn't submitted any applications since.

For her, the 1+ year old child is the biggest "obstacle" to employment; a child that age is quite draining. She also said she hasn't had a full night's sleep in over a year, surviving on coffee during the day. While chatting with her, you could tell she was very sleepy, her speech was slow to respond, giving the impression of not wanting to communicate, not saying an extra word.

How Far Has AI Programming Developed?

Maybe because she hasn't worked for a while, she only knew AI programming had become widespread, but didn't know exactly how far it had developed. I think this is a very good question, it's what she's most lacking right now, hitting the nail on the head.

And it's a good question for me, since I observe a lot daily, practice a lot, and communicate a lot; I've talked to people from large, medium, and small companies. Current AI programming adoption mainly falls into three tiers:

First, internet companies are leading, fully adopting AI programming + full-stack development, merging front-end and back-end teams, even merging testing teams, all transitioning to become AI full-stack engineers.

Second, small and medium-sized enterprises are fully adopting AI programming, tentatively doing full-stack development, having front-end developers write back-end code and back-end developers write front-end code. Maybe within six months they'll fully promote full-stack development.

Third, traditional industries like state-owned enterprises and banks are using AI programming, but some still maintain the front-end/back-end separation approach. They are the slowest to transition, and their tech stacks are also older, with some still using the Vue2 framework for front-end code.

Additionally, I just saw today that some internet companies are starting to promote a new approach: letting PMs write code directly with AI programming, while programmers act as a technical support and efficiency-boosting role, providing a safety net for PMs and ensuring smooth progress.

This approach made my eyes light up. For ordinary products and projects without technical difficulty, PMs don't need to communicate requirements to programmers; they can just write the code themselves and verify it themselves. When they get stuck, they find a programmer to solve the problem. One programmer can serve 5 PMs, no problem. At the same time, programmers develop efficiency tools and processes like tool MCP skill to help PMs produce high-quality code.

Maybe in six months, this will be the norm.

Should a Female Programmer of Advanced Age with a Child Continue?

If you were a fresh graduate with no absolute programming advantage, I definitely wouldn't recommend becoming a programmer; it's too competitive now.

But you've already worked for 10 years and have a bachelor's degree. Are you going to just give up on the skills and experience accumulated over these 10 years?

Also, you haven't even put in 100% effort to try to find a job, or you didn't get the chance to put in that effort because of childbirth, and you didn't get the chance to try your luck. Luck is also important.

My advice is: don't give up for now. Prepare your resume, prepare for interview questions, submit applications, all the way until next spring.

If there's still no opportunity by May next year, then give up. You've tried and persisted, and you won't regret it when you look back.

Of course, the premise is that you have to work hard during this period, don't have a three-minute passion and give up halfway. That's a common occurrence.

Current Plan

The first thing to do is take action, write a resume, submit it, and go to interviews. It might not be successful initially, but first get interview invitations.

The current pure front-end resume won't work. Your resume must include AI programming + full-stack capabilities, otherwise, it's useless to submit it.

While submitting resumes, also practice some interview questions, just brush up on common interview basics (Eight-Legged Essay) in a short time.

Once you get interview invitations, go to them, communicate, and adjust your resume and review as needed when you encounter issues. It's a process. The resume you write initially will look different after 2 months.

Use half a month as a stage, summarize once, and plan for the next half month. This makes it easier to avoid giving up halfway.

Do this until next spring, and I think you should be able to find a decent job. It won't be that you find nothing at all.

Final Thoughts

At the end, her main worry was: she's always been a front-end developer and had no back-end development experience before leaving her job, and she's worried about being able to do full-stack work.

This worry is normal, but there's always a first time for everything if you want to break through; you have to explore forward.

After 10 years of work, you should have some back-end capabilities and practice, right? If you really don't, you can learn on the job and write some of it, right? You can't possibly know nothing at all, be completely at zero, right?

Since we're still in the early stages of AI full-stack development, the requirements for full-stack capabilities aren't that high yet. This is a chance to hurry up, don't hesitate.

Start doing it first, don't be afraid of setbacks, adjust as you go.