The author | bo-wen liu (nine to five)

I believe this is a topic that everyone in the front end industry is concerned about, especially in today’s world, where front-end technology is evolving so fast, frameworks and tools are blooming, and the cost of making this decision is very high in today’s world. So, this is a very critical thing.

See through the appearance to the essence

Back to the essential question: What determines how much an employee is paid? Why do programmers get paid more than other jobs?

If you want to ask about the connection between “what skills are worth investing in” and “what determines an employee’s salary,” here’s a quick derivation: What is learning technology for? -> Find a good job -> What is the purpose of finding a good job? -> Earn more money -> What determines wages?

There is no question of whether it is worth it or not.

In economics there is a concept called “factors of production” which are the “inputs” used to produce goods and services. When an Internet business produces technology services, it uses programmers’ time (Labour), a “factor of production”. The “demand” of factors of production is derived demand, that is, the demand of factors of production of an enterprise is derived from its decision to supply goods or services to another market. Therefore, the demand for front-end programmers is inextricably linked to the enterprise’s supply of Internet services.

Like other markets in the economy, the labor market is also dominated by the forces of supply and demand. An enterprise determines the demand for labor based on profit. An enterprise pursues profit maximization, so it does not directly care about the number of employees it employs or the quantity of products and services it produces. It only cares about profit, which is equal to the total revenue from producing the services minus the total cost of producing those services. The enterprise’s product and service quantity and employee demand are all produced with the primary goal of “profit maximization”.

Another concept is “marginal product of labor”, that is, the increase of output caused by an increase of one unit of labor, in the actual production process shows the effect of “diminishing marginal product”, that is, the marginal product of one unit of input decreases with the increase of input.

Diminishing marginal product: if the output of one programmer is assumed to be 100, then two programmers could be 180, and three programmers could be 240…

Since profit is total revenue minus total cost, an additional programmer’s profit is his contribution to revenue minus his salary. Because of the nature of “diminishing marginal product,” the number of programmers employed by a firm reaches a point at which it becomes unprofitable, so the number of people employed by a firm stays at the point at which the “marginal product value” of Labour (the marginal product multiplied by the price of the output) equals wages.

Factors affecting wage movements

Through the previous foreshadowing, we can now draw the conclusion:

  1. Wages will adjust spontaneously, bringing the supply and demand of labor into balance

  2. Wages are equal to the marginal product of labor

In order to maximize profits, the firm employs labor until its marginal product equals wages. Thus, once the purchase of labor brings supply and demand into equilibrium, “wages must equal the marginal product value of labor.” So any event that changes the “supply and demand” of labor must change the “equilibrium wage” and the “marginal product value” by an equal amount, because the two quantities must always be equal. Therefore, wages are determined by “productivity” as measured by the marginal product of labor, that is, highly productive workers are paid more and less productive workers are paid less.

Factors affecting labor demand

The price of a product or service: The marginal product value is the quantity of the product multiplied by the price of the product. Therefore, when the price of the product changes, the marginal product value changes, thus driving the change of labor demand and wages. For example, a rise in the price of a product increases the “marginal product value” per programmer, thus increasing the demand for labor and increasing the wages of programmers. Conversely, falling prices reduce the value of the marginal product, which also reduces the labor demand of firms, and reduces the wages of programmers.

Technological change: Engineers are constantly inventing new and better technologies, and technological progress generally increases the “productivity” of programmers, increasing the marginal product of labor, thus increasing the demand for labor, and thus their own wages.

Review the past

Back to the front, the technology of rapid revolution is essentially in the front-end engineers create bonus to us, technology of rapid change rapidly promoted the front-end engineer “efficiency”, and the market value of the present Internet products is higher, in such circumstances, business and technology in the cycle of success each other, the demand of the front-end programmers and wages are rising. This is borne out by the rising salaries of new graduates who join the front end each year.

From this perspective, we can judge which technologies are worth investing in according to “efficiency technologies”. The improvement of marginal product value brought by front-end technological change can be divided into two categories:

  1. Indirect: Improve r&d efficiency -> improve business efficiency

  2. Direct: Improves service efficiency

Most technological changes are “indirect” ways to improve the marginal product value of front-end engineers by improving their R&D efficiency, and then using the improvement of R&D efficiency to drive business efficiency, thereby increasing their marginal product value. To name a few familiar examples: cross-end technologies, Node.js, front-end frameworks, Babel, Webpack, etc. All of these technologies “improve business efficiency” by “improving R&D efficiency” or “improving R&D efficiency” by changing production relationships.

There are also technical changes that can directly improve “business efficiency”, such as performance, scaffolding, middle and back office.

Back to the original question: Which technologies are worth the time and effort to learn?

The answer is: once a technology killer comes along, whether “directly” or “indirectly” to improve the efficiency and capability of all people, the technology must be learned. If a new technology comes out and does not affect efficiency, then not learning is not a problem.

Looking to the future

From some of the information received at present and the signs seen, for the future can improve the efficiency of the technical changes, including but not limited to: Serverless, front-end intelligent, intelligent construction. Of course, there are some areas that never die: cross-ends, performance, etc. As technology advances, specific technical projects may expire, not in these areas. All of the techniques mentioned above meet the criteria of “improving efficiency”, so you can take some time to learn about them.

Serverless

The capabilities provided by Serverless can improve the front end engineer’s R&D efficiency and capability range by changing the production relationship, thereby increasing the marginal product value of the front end engineer. Like this year’s Tmall Double 11 SSR is achieved through Faas function, with Node.js, front-end engineers write some functions of the service side is relatively easy. But the late operation and maintenance work, database optimization and other problems are front-end engineers are not good at. Serverless completely relieves front-end engineers of these concerns, which means that front-end engineers have a much broader scope to work with, and productivity has improved dramatically due to changes in production relationships. Efficiency and scope will be improved together, which will increase the demand for front-end engineers. In the case of constant supply, the demand will increase, which will increase the salary of front-end engineers.

Front-end intelligence

Front-end intelligence includes D2C (design draft to code), P2C (requirements document to code), and so on. This is easier to understand. How many pages can a front-end engineer produce in a day? Having a machine do this can produce countless pages a day, which is a straightforward efficiency gain.

Intelligent construction

Intelligent construction is a kind of technical upgrade for a specific field. It is not to improve the r&d efficiency of front-end engineers, but to directly improve the efficiency of business through technology. For enterprises, the benefits are the same. The improvement of R&D efficiency is to improve business efficiency. If the business efficiency is directly improved, the benefits for enterprises are exactly the same. Therefore, this technology also increases the value of what the front end engineers produce.

What is intelligent construction, today’s construction is mostly manual construction, if the use of big data on goods and people through the algorithm to find the best matching mode according to thousands of thousands of pages automatically generated venue, this is intelligent construction. Its efficiency will undoubtedly be greatly improved.

Cross-end, performance

The front end is an area where a specific cross-end technology (and jQuery is a cross-end technology as well) or performance technology may be replaced by more efficient technology as the technology evolves, but the area is not. These fields can be followed up and invested in long-term research. Once there is an innovative breakthrough in technology, the improvement of performance can directly improve the business efficiency and thus increase the marginal production value, while the breakthrough of cross-end technology will improve the research and development efficiency and thus increase the marginal production value.

conclusion

“Factors of production” is used in the production of goods and services “into”, the programmer’s time (labor) is a kind of “factors of production”, and factors of production “requirements” is derived demand, according to the nature of the diminishing marginal production, enterprise demand for programmers will remain in the “marginal output value” of labor is equal to the salary of that point.

Once the purchase of labor brings supply and demand into equilibrium, “wages must equal the marginal product of labor.” Therefore, any event that changes the “supply and demand” of labor must change the “equilibrium wage” and the “marginal product value” equally. Therefore, the level of wages depends on the “productivity” measured by the marginal product value of labor. That is to say, the workers with high productivity get higher wages, and the workers with low productivity get lower wages.

The price of a product or service can affect employee wages, technical transformation to upgrade can also influence the employee’s salary, due to the rapid technology change rapidly promote the front-end engineer “efficiency”, so the technology revolution is essentially in the front-end engineers create bonus to us, and as the technology changes, increase in wages, the front-end engineer.

You can use “efficiency technologies” to determine which technologies are worth investing in, looking ahead: Across back-end technology, Node. Js, front-end framework, Babel, Webpack technology front-end industry such as the efficiency and ability of a sharp rise in the front-end engineer “marginal output value”, thus enhance the enterprise the demand for the front-end engineer, with the increase of enterprise demand for front-end engineer, front-end engineer’s salary as the industry’s rising prosperity together. This is borne out by the rising salaries of graduates who have joined the front end each year in the past.

Facing the future, Serverless, front-end intelligence, intelligent construction, cross-end, performance and other fields will continue to improve the efficiency of the front end, so in the future, the demand for front-end engineers will further increase, and the salary of front-end engineers will rise with the prosperity of the industry.