This is all very fair, and yet I think many would agree that the “frontend ceiling” is a thing, that many candidates are not skilled enough for the roles, and that the general state of frontend engineering is not great.
This is perhaps less true in 2025 than it was in 2012, but I feel it was largely the same until maybe 2022, and is still not far off this.
I think the engineering is underestimated, but also I think job applicants are very bimodal - some coming from a design or boot camp background, able to be productive but not run scaled engineering projects, and some from perhaps a backend/etc background and can scale a codebase, but who are prone to trivialising frontend development and giving less consideration to design and UX.
This is perhaps less true in 2025 than it was in 2012, but I feel it was largely the same until maybe 2022, and is still not far off this.
I think the engineering is underestimated, but also I think job applicants are very bimodal - some coming from a design or boot camp background, able to be productive but not run scaled engineering projects, and some from perhaps a backend/etc background and can scale a codebase, but who are prone to trivialising frontend development and giving less consideration to design and UX.