FED or BED?

We spoke with Wix’s Frontend & Backend guild managers to uncover the differences and surprising similarities between the two groups to help you decide which path is right for you.

What was one moment that summarized what it means to be a frontend or backend developer at Wix for you?

Itay: When I first joined Wix, I was given a task to define the API for a component. After a couple of hours, I went to my team lead and said, “I’m done.” To my surprise he responded, “No. Go check all the use cases we have with our verticals that currently use this API. Then, let’s decide how we want to refactor this component we’re rewriting.”

So, I dove into it and realized there were hundreds of developers relying on this one component. That meant I had to consider all these different use cases in a way that was both simple to use, and easily extensible. I had never encountered anything at that dev scale before. It was a defining moment that showed me what being a developer at Wix is all about: thinking beyond the code, understanding its impact and building at scale.

Gal: I’d say it’s a toss-up between a design session – where everyone’s passionately debating how a flow should work – and a production incident. When there’s an incident, you suddenly open a bunch of dashboards, involve multiple teams and work together to solve it as quickly as possible.

How would you describe the biggest difference between your roles?

Gal: There are more frontend developers than backend developers at Wix. The Backend guild is a smaller group – small but mighty! The BED environment is typically more stable, while FED has tons of tools and frameworks. Another key difference is complexity: for backend developers, a tiny change can impact dozens of production servers because Wix’s ecosystem is so intricate. We might be “further” from the user interface, but we face huge scalability challenges, which also ensures our performance remains top-notch at all times.

Itay: BED teams deal a lot with domain-driven design and typically use fewer tools compared to FED. On the frontend side, we work with the Editor, the Viewer and different tech stacks that vary from project to project. Sometimes we jump from one architecture to a completely different one. Plus, FED depends on the end user’s browser, network and device constraints, so we have to consider all of that.

Gal Sharir, Backend Guild Manager (BED)

Both professions have their own reputations: FED being all about looks, or BED being all about math. What’s one challenge your team faces that would surprise someone who believes in those stereotypes?

Gal: Here’s a statement: An API can also be “beautiful”! There’s a ton of creativity in BED. Designing an elegant API or architecture might not be visually artistic, but it’s still an artform in its own right. And at least in Backend at Wix, there isn’t that much “pure math.” There’s a lot more architecture and design thinking involved.

Itay: Many frontend developers do enjoy design – but not all of us do! I’m not particularly design-focused for example, and yet I haven’t been fired. Many of us rarely write CSS these days, and there are plenty of areas where you barely touch the UI at all. This surprises candidates every time. There’s a lot of algorithmic work and state management tasks that are pure software engineering, which often gets overlooked when people think about frontend development.

Wix is known for its products and large-scale user base. How does that shape the way you approach frontend or backend development compared to approaches taken at other companies?

Gal: At Wix, whatever you build you have to assume it will operate at a massive scale. We think about resilience and design before we even write a single line of code.

Itay: We have hundreds of frontend developers. Hundreds. They all work together on various projects. That’s why our architecture is a micro-frontend approach. If I create a new feature, I’m not the only one who will use it; in fact, entire teams might build on it. We have platform teams that serve other frontend developers, and each group uses each other’s code. It’s very similar to microservices in the backend world at other companies.

What was a feature or project that pushed the boundaries of what FED or BED can do at Wix?

Itay: Wix is known for creating websites in the simplest, most accessible ways. But sometimes, users want to export the site they’ve built and take it elsewhere. We decided to enable that with something called our Builder. We took Wix’s incredibly complex ecosystem, and said, “We’ll support export and even import (which is even more complex) back into the Wix platform.” There aren’t many companies that can do this. Ultimately, it means delivering React code that anyone can read, use, edit and bring back to Wix, and it should still work perfectly.

Gal: On the backend side, we have an internal framework called Nile. It lets you create microservices in just a few clicks – from generating the API to hooking up Kafka, connecting to databases, or adding an Elastic Search layer if needed. Essentially, you can have a running service within minutes, all packaged with the necessary logic.

"An API can also be ‘beautiful’! Designing an elegant API or architecture might not be visually artistic, but it’s still an art form in its own right." - Gal Sharir

Itay Friedman, Frontend Guild Manager (FED)

If you could magically instill one skill or mindset in every new developer joining your guild, what would it be?

Gal: Communication skills. At the end of the day, we’re all working together. That’s the bread and butter of everything we do.

Itay: Being fearless and adaptable. Things change so quickly, especially in frontend. If you don’t embrace constant change, you’ll struggle to keep up.

What growth opportunities or unique paths can new developers expect once they join your guild?

Gal: Because of Wix’s unique structure with professional guilds, people can develop deep specializations. For example, you can become a Production Master, meaning everyone comes to you for production-related issues. Or an API Master, Database Master, Security Master, etc. Each of these is a growth path that goes beyond the usual vertical track (such as becoming a team lead or head of a guild).

Itay: We have a similar setup in frontend, with plenty of growth options for individual contributors, like API Master, A11y Champion, Tech Lead, Guild Master, etc. There are a lot of horizontal growth opportunities, but there’s also plenty of vertical growth. Right now, we have around 10 open positions for team leads. Plus, there’s significant organizational encouragement for internal mobility. People who’ve been at Wix for a decade have often switched domains every couple of years. It’s almost like joining a brand-new company without leaving Wix.

What was a learning moment you had at Wix and how did you grow from it?

Gal: At one point, when I was a Production Master, we ran into severe memory issues on our servers and couldn’t figure out the problem. Another engineer and I teamed up with a memory expert from a different team. We dug deeply into production logs, learned how to manage memory more effectively, and in turn, Wix as a whole benefited from our findings. That’s the beauty of Wix – there’s always an expert for every little niche.

Itay: When I joined Wix, I didn’t know much about frontend. Previously, I had been more of a full-stack developer with an emphasis on the server-side. Suddenly, I was part of a new team where I had to dive into code written by another group. You have tons of questions, and you don’t always get immediate answers, so you have to figure things out on your own. I learned a lot about really digging into someone else’s code. That’s a skill everyone definitely develops at Wix. At some point, you also realize that Stack Overflow won’t always have the answers because the challenges you’re facing are unique to an organization that has outgrown it.

What’s the Wix way of doing backend or frontend?

Itay: When I joined, I expected to be a part of a giant organization that would be hard to influence. But right from my first project, I realized that wasn’t the case. I worked on a big feature that required a complete rewrite of a component. While I was at it, I saw a feature that would take two weeks to implement and thought, ‘This isn’t very good, maybe we shouldn’t do it.’ I figured my manager would say, ‘No way, we already committed.’ Instead, he said, ‘I agree, go talk to the manager in charge of that.’ That manager oversaw 400 employees, yet the very next day I showed him my findings, and he said, ‘I agree, let’s cut it.’ It was amazing to see how flat the organization’s hierarchy felt, and how open it is to change.Plus, if I’m developing something for one team, I still have the freedom to modify code in another team’s repository if needed. The code is open, there are contribution guidelines and the teams provide mentoring for contributions, which is amazing.

Gal: The Backend guild is the oldest guild at Wix. We have standards for everything: how we handle production, how we design APIs and how we do architecture. These pillars are what I consider “the Wix way” of doing backend.

If you could give one piece of advice to an engineer who isn’t sure which path they should pursue, what would it be?

Itay: Honestly, on a macro-level, it doesn’t really matter; both options are excellent. The FED guild is huge and has a wide range of roles. You can be on the product side of the spectrum or the super-technical side, or even somewhere in between, depending on your passions and interests. 

Gal: If you don’t want to juggle dozens of environments and user-facing constraints at once, and you’re excited by massive scale, complex architecture and intricate design, then backend might be your calling!

"I had never encountered anything at that dev scale before. It was a defining moment that showed me what being a developer at Wix is all about: thinking beyond the code, understanding its impact, and building at scale." - Itay Friedman