💬 Full stack or pick one side? My lead gave me both jobs this week

This week my team lead gave me 2 tickets. One was a button that looked broken on phones. The other was a slow database query on the orders page, taking 9 seconds to load. I finished the button in 1 afternoon. Fixed the layout, checked 3 screen sizes, went home on time. The query took me 3 days, too much coffee, and a very long chat with a senior called Prakash. Here's what bothers me. I liked the query more. I've been telling everyone I'm a frontend person. When the page finally loaded in under 1 second, I sat there staring at the screen for a full minute. Nobody else noticed. Nobody says well done to a database index. The button people can see. My lead sent a thumbs up for the button within 5 minutes. My friend from college says specialise. He's 3 years in as a pure frontend developer and earns about 40% more than me. My cousin in Pune says learn everything, because small companies want one person who does all of it. Both of them sound very sure of themselves, and both work at completely different kinds of places. I'm at a mid size services company where nobody cares what I call myself on the project. I don't want to learn 6 things badly. I'd rather know 2 properly and be dull about the rest. What scares me is picking backend because it felt good this week and then getting bored in a year. Or picking frontend because people clap, and then finding out I only liked the clapping. Has anybody switched sides after 2 or 3 years? Was it hard to explain in interviews?

I'd lean towards picking a side early. I went wide, learned a bit of 5 things, and 2 interviews showed it. Choosing 1 side and then adding the other slowly worked better for me.

I'd pay attention to the fact that you enjoyed the query more. That's useful information about yourself. I did only frontend for my first year because it was what was available, and I was bored by month 8. Moving toward the server side felt like switching on a light, though not everyone feels that way. Give it 3 more months of both, and note which ticket you volunteer for without being asked.