My answer is yes. It's overcomplicated.
Web front-end developer create programs for a most popular environment - browser, because browser capabilities and API's are growing extremly fast and it's great.
But let's take a look inside browser. Browser has several separate knowledge areas: html ,css, javascript, dom, bom, data transport, specifications, implementations, tooling. Also you should work with this areas for several platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, TV. Also you should remember, for example, behavioirs for several render mode: default, transcoder, webview, standalone, quirks mode. Apply this on modern browsers - IE, Opera, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and you will get complex and extremly fast changing eco-system of code.
Just a moment, I forgot to add user experience, accessibility, testing, seo, design, usability, performance, semantics, progressive enhancement , graceful degradation, cvs, cli, ssh, package manager, security, build, livereload, pipes, data formats, fonts, graphics, gpu, open gl, sql, networks, tcp/ip, http, spdy, gzip, deflate, base64, mvp, mvc, mvvc, reactive programming, functional programming, object oriented programming, screen sizes, orientation, jit, ast, llvm, dns, workers, fps, regexp, csrf, clickjacking, bots, pc devices, android app, ios sandbox, nginx, crypto to front-end developer stack. And of course compatibility and bugs of all this things too. And only front-end developer with a huge base of knowlege and experience can look forward without fear.
And of course, it will be always overcomplicated. Frameworks just resolve some problems with capability and data stucture.
P.S. I don't know about .Net eco-system, but in Java in 2008 I have to write 25 variants of the game for most popular phone vendors - Motorolla, Siemens and so on. And of course I had to kept in mind a lot of thinigs, because java was a most popular environment...
You poured out my heart @pinal !