Why are software engineers more respected than web developers?

Frontend equals code
Backend equals code plus data

Although I can’t say that there is a difference in “respect” there is a trend that companies are willing to hire almost anybody to write web part if the rate is low, but prefer seasoned people taking care of the backend.

I mostly ignored this trend till I’ve started running my own company.

And now I can say that I’ve found a single difference that causes it - dealing with persistent data (also can be called backward compatibility).

99% of web development is “here is JSON from backend - render it in some fancy way”.

About 40% of backend development is “here are 50 legacy database tables with weird structures, you are free to rewrite everything, just make sure you don’t lose any data”. Or “we have API of 70 methods that contradict each other, we need to add 10 more that would contradict those legacy ones and then fix all these new contradictions preserving older contradictions”.

Inability to just erase any part of code and rewrite it makes the job far more difficult. Web devs face it too when providing components that are used by others, but this is relatively rare.

Check also: How Long Does It Take To Master JavaScript And Get A Job?