I started my career in FE and still consider myself a FE dev despite technically being a full stack dev.

Sometimes I'd be working with my team on something and they'd be like "why is this needed?" and I'm like "because javascript" or "because react."

While I agree with your sentiment that FE dev is certainly not simple, JS and front end architecture ad a whole does have its faults. That's why highly skilled FE devs who can build scalable, beautiful FE apps (whether using SPA or SSR) can be highly paid.