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Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

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11–20 of 217 posts

Re: Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

#11
I agree with others that a smaller company seems the best fit since they need generalists. Potentially a manager role might be good if you've got the non-technical skills for it. That lets you hire people for areas you no longer want to be hands on with.

As an example, at my current job over the last two years I've done data engineering, devops, sysadmin, security, machine learning, backend api, people management, product management, project management, and probably some things I forgot about.

It does help to have a core set of skills that you are particularly good at and experienced. Mine is data engineering followed by machine learning and devops (devops being a recent addition). I avoid boredom in those areas by building better systems at every company based on past experience and the specific business goals of the company.

Re: Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

#14
Early to mid career, the “full stack” developer has something going for them: odds are pretty high you have 7 years’ experience rather than “1 year [7] times”.

Something i learned about myself a little bit farther in was that I wasn’t a generalist so much as I was a serial specialist (once you haven’t touched something you used the be good at for seven years, can you still claim to be good at it? Turns out I can’t).

What you list sounds quite a bit like what devops was supposed to be but nobody does it that way. Instead you should probably look at small companies. In a large one the only way to wear that many hats is to stick your nose into other people’s responsibilities. At a small company there are gaps everywhere, and people are just glad when someone can fill them.

If you have any ability to mentor, you might want to look at lead positions as well, or think about what you need to get there. That gets you some management responsibilities but you still get to make things.

Re: Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

#15
I will run contrary to many suggestions already here. It seems (from the 3 example titles you give) that you want to stay technical/individual contributor. If that’s the case, you can absolutely take your breadth of skills to a big company, whether an established tech company or a technical team within eg the F500. I personally identify as a generalist also, and I (through complete accident and happenstance) moved into cybersecurity (not appsec to be clear, appsec is a team within cyber). Basically one of the most lucrative niches out of my broader range of experiences. It has worked out well for me.

Tl;dr - figure out which of your experience areas align with an area that’s either lucrative to you or of high interest for you for other reasons, and pursue that at a large company. At higher technical levels, your soft-skill and cross-dept experience will further accelerate your career.

Re: Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

#17
I have a pretty similar story: Worked in enterprise for the last few years and recently I ended up leading and coordinating a "scrum" team in a technical lead position.

I do not spend as much time as I would like contributing to the codebase (the devs in my team do often a better job of it), but rather tend to act as a solution architect. I often bootstrap projects, do a lot of research and development, build proof of concepts, and overall push the team towards best practices.

I am very proud of some of my achievements (we are lucky enough to have freedom in the tech that we use and are currently testing out Elm for a small app, we moved the team from Java to Kotlin..) but I feel like I have lowered my value in the general market.

I would be curious to know in what form you contribute to your current team. I do not feel like my job is done here, but I am also going back and forth on whether I should get back to a more coding-oriented job, rather than doing my coding in my free time just to keep in touch with the craft.

Re: Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

#18
Project managers with technical skills are worth gold in product companies (possibly in other companies as well).

Run a few product implementations at customer side and there will be no monotony.

If you grow older and start appreciating more the routine in your life you can go into product management using the knowledge accumulated on customer side implementations and finally consulting.

Re: Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?

#20
Oh shit.

>I've been at the same small company for over 7 years. I started at the bottom, worked my way to the top after 3 years, and I've been here since. For a couple years I created new positions for myself because I hate being stagnant, but there's nothing else to do here.

I've been there and I thrive on it to this day. There are ups and downs with this, but you have something that will serve you very well if you choose to have a change of perspective/attitude.

You can either take this as a blessing or as a curse. Have you thought about going into an executive role and leading the company in a larger capacity, and helping it grow further?

At a certain point you have to drop off all of these duties that you are performing so that you can leverage the people you have around you.

You may think you still enjoy doing all of these things, but this stagnancy is going to haunt you, because there isn't an infinite growth in these areas. People, and companies, like predictability. Your voracious appetite is an anomaly. And you can't keep it up forever, either, because eventually you'll just plain get tired of it.

>I also feel like someone that is filling these roles at another company probably knows/does it better job than I can.

Questionable. There are a lot of muppets in other companies that don't know what they are doing.

Did the company grow over the years that you were there? I'm assuming it's not as "small" now as it was when you started. If so, you grew along with the company and you have a very good grasp of how to introduce and manage things within a company over time as it grows (ie. transitioning/pain points).

>What roles out there fit the skill set of someone that is good at a whole lot of things, but doesn't feel like a master/senior in any one of them?

People here are already playing Startup Bingo bullshit.

I doubt working at a startup will satisfy you, because that shit will feel like Groundhog Day much like how it currently does for you. You'll get to go through all the same nonsense over and over again.

Furthermore, the startup hustle is far riskier (with even less guarantee of a payout) than the position that you are in, because your position is much rarer. Anyone can choose to start a startup. Very few people can choose to be at the top of the food chain in a company that is alive (and healthy, I hope) after 7+ years. You didn't stumble into this position by accident.

You can leverage knowledge you don't know you have to do things that you couldn't do at a startup, all while having financial backing, a solid team and processes in place.

>My issue is I haven't had formal training in a lot of it

Most of what you know that is vital (that you've dismissed, I think) has no formal training. I can get formally trained monkeys to sling code all day if I wanted to, and while it wouldn't be done as well as I would have done it, it would satisfy the larger picture and keep things moving forward. Sacrosanct words for "engineers" who keep themselves busy writing more useless unit tests I'm sure.

>So finally to my question: what role/job title I should be looking for?

Before you jump ship, see what options at the top of the company pyramid are available for you, because if you leave and go elsewhere, and if you market yourself as a "PHP Developer" or "Systems Admin", you'll more than likely just move the clock back by 7 years and have to start all over again, in a different company, doing the same shit you've done for the last 7 years.

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