I Became a Backend Engineer to Prove a Point

"You're a girl, you do the frontend."

That's more or less what I was told during a university group project, where I was the only woman on a team of computer science students. When it came time to divide the work, the reasoning was apparently pretty straightforward: I was the girl, so I could take care of the frontend. You know, make things look pretty.
I don't remember the exact wording, but I remember the message. And I definitely remember how it made me feel. I was furious.

Here I was, studying the same subject, taking the same courses, and working toward the same degree. Yet somehow, my gender had apparently qualified me for a specific part of the application. Nobody had asked what I enjoyed working on, what I was good at, or what I wanted to learn.

So I decided I was going to prove a point. If they thought I belonged in frontend because I was a woman, I was going to do anything but frontend. A perfectly reasonable and not at all stubborn response, obviously.

Becoming a backend engineer

And I stuck to it. Over the following years, I worked at two companies where I successfully avoided frontend development altogether. I worked with backend systems, databases, architecture, and infrastructure. I enjoyed the technical challenges, the problem-solving, and understanding how systems worked behind the scenes. And I was proud of it. I wanted to prove that I was perfectly capable of doing what I considered the more technically challenging engineering work. I didn't want anyone assuming that I'd be more comfortable making things look nice than designing and building systems.

The funny thing is that nobody was actively forcing me into frontend anymore. I was the one making sure I stayed away from it. Looking back, I genuinely enjoyed backend engineering, and I still do. I wouldn't trade those years or the experience I gained. But I do wonder how much of my determination to avoid frontend came from my actual technical preferences, and how much came from wanting to prove those university teammates wrong.

Another assumption, another interview

The university project wasn't the only time I encountered assumptions about what kind of role might suit me. During one job application, I had successfully completed the initial technical take-home assignments for a software engineering position. My first name isn't particularly common in Germany, so most people here can't tell whether it belongs to a man or a woman. During a subsequent phone interview, the recruiter seemed surprised to discover I was a woman.

Later, when I was invited for an on-site interview, someone from the engineering side mentioned that they'd also invited a product manager to assess whether I might be better suited to "that" kind of role. I remember being confused. I had applied for a software engineering position, completed the technical assignments, and made it clear that I wanted to pursue engineering. I can't know whether gender played any part in that decision. But the experience stayed with me.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a product manager, a UX designer, or a frontend engineer. The issue isn't the role. It's the assumption.

The plot twist: frontend is actually engineering. Who knew?

Fast-forward to joining SAP LeanIX. After years of deliberately avoiding frontend work, I finally started dipping my toes into it. And something rather inconvenient happened. I discovered that frontend engineering is genuinely complex. Not just CSS, pretty colours, and moving buttons around until everything looks nice.

I started seeing questions that felt surprisingly familiar. How should we structure components? Where should state live? How do we keep the application maintainable as it grows? How do we properly test everything? Different technologies, different challenges, but the same engineering mindset I'd always enjoyed. Of course, frontend and backend have different challenges. But neither deserves to be reduced to a stereotype.

And suddenly, I realised something slightly embarrassing.

In trying to reject someone else's bias, I had developed one of my own.

For years, I'd associated backend engineering with the serious, technically challenging work I wanted to prove I could do. But by doing that, I'd also implicitly accepted part of the original assumption: that frontend was somehow less technical. The very stereotype that had made me so angry had influenced not only my career choices, but also how I perceived an entire engineering discipline. It took actually working with frontend to challenge that perception.

And one of the things I appreciate about my current engineering environment is how little these old assumptions seem to matter. Most of the engineers working on the core frontend application are men. Meanwhile, backend engineers are happy to explore frontend development, learn new technologies, and become more full-stack. Frontend isn't women's work. Backend isn't men's work. They're different areas of software engineering, with different challenges and opportunities. And engineers should feel free to explore whichever interests them, without having to prove a point.

The bias I didn't realise I was carrying

Recently, I told this story during a conversation with a few female colleagues. Until then, I'd never really considered it a story about gender bias. It was just the slightly ridiculous reason I'd avoided frontend for years.

I've spent most of my engineering career working with men, and I've always felt comfortable doing so. Growing up, I never needed to see another woman doing a particular job to believe I could do it myself. I never really thought of gender as something that defined my career. And yet, here I was, realising that one assumption made by a few university classmates had influenced my professional choices for years. Not by convincing me that I couldn't do something. But by making me so determined to prove that I could do something else.

I never needed another woman to prove to me that I could be an engineer.

But apparently, I needed to prove to a few men that I could be the kind of engineer they hadn't imagined me being.

Published by...

Liat Harel

Visit author page