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

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

#161

Post by minhazm423 »

akcreek wrote: post #82
chirau wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This business of buying and selling businesses, I have heard a bit about it here and there but i don't even know where to start looking for people who are either selling or who are buying. I'd love to look into it as I think I would quite enjoy it. Any resources you could point to?

Buying online businesses wasn't even on my radar at the start, but I stumbled onto the first one via a blog that I followed. They posted that they were going to sell their online business and to drop them an email if interested. I read that and immediately thought, well that's for me, so I sent them an email. I had zero clue what I was doing at that point. The last business I acquired was though a broker; FE Internat…

Any good resources you’ve used to educate yourself? You mentioned you’re self taught so I figure you’ll have many!

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

#162

Post by anonsivalley652 »

Either a Site Reliability Engineer (SW-SRE/SA-SRE), startup founder or farmer. ;) (It's also true: farmers often do welding, machining, industrial maintenance (hydraulic/electrical/mechanical), surveying, geology, botany, chemistry, accounting, marketing and more.)

Work is real experience, don't discount it. :thumbs up emoji here:

If you're worried about knowledge gaps, here's a badass career development project -> self-pace audit a quality CS degree:

- Find the required course list for a particular university, let's say MIT or CalTech.

http://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/computer-science-engine...

http://cms.caltech.edu/academics/ugrad_cs

- Select a sequence of courses based on their requirements.

- Go through each and every course syllabus and textbook to learn the big ideas.

- Write and keep notes in your own words to summarize each concept.

- If you get stuck on any concept, scour the internet, MOOCs and youtube until you get it. As a last resort, SO/HN/Reddit.

- Do the syllabus homework at a minimum.

PS: I was self-taught (Pascal, assembly, C89, C++, and Java), built beige PCs, was an assistant manager at a software store (Egghead), and had a sysadmin consulting company installed an ISDN modem, made NIX and Windows place nice and helped port a BWR/PWR simulator from NIX to Win32 before I was 18. Then I spent 10 years, money and took on some debt to get a degree that ultimately proved worthless trying to appease HR people and family... don't do that.

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

#163

Post by gshdg »

ddebernardy wrote: post #155
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smaller companies need generalists more than big ones do Big companies like Google also seem to hire a lot of generalists who have good programming fundamentals, are smart, and can quickly (i.e. within months) become productive in many kinds of projects. These generalists then work on a project for 1-3 years. When they lose interest, they move to another Google project or leave the company. If you really want to wo…

Care to share in what positions such companies make such hires? I've looked around a few times over the years and have never found the slightest hint that they did such a thing.

I’ve been recruited for these and met people who worked in these roles. Typically it’s called a CTO or Head of Engineering. Sometimes it’s a chief architect or staff/principal engineer title or something like “engineer in residence” or they let people choose their own title.

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

#164

Post by scarface74 »

WA wrote: post #31

Make your own software product. Requires to be a jack of all trades. Coding, marketing, writing, customer support, design. Because it's only you, you don't have to feel like "being the smartest person in the room". Downside: Takes quite some time to take off.

Sure that’s easy - all you have to do is get funding, create a product that people want, market it and make money.

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

#165

Post by johannes1234321 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #141
raydev wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people given opportunity to take $44k would quickly turn it into $0 Yes, because giving that much money to a kid and having it pay off also involves a lot of luck.

That, or good parenting in the years before.

Still needs luck, even the smartest kid can make a wrong bet or underestimate another market player.

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

#166

Post by notduncansmith »

BossingAround wrote: post #67
duder_3569 wrote: post #55

Become a Consultant at Red Hat! Wonderful, wonderful place to be a "jack of all trades," while also allowing you the opportunity to carve out a niche if you find you do become passionate about just one thing. In addition to working in DevOps roles, there are a range of consulting opportunities that are diverse, which adds another layer of keeping things interesting. You can do work with small companies, large compani…

Consultants seem to have a very chaotic work life, traveling pretty much non-stop, being thrown to clients with no deep knowledge (in the beginning at least) and the sink-or-swim mindset... If that's what OP (or anyone else) is looking for, consulting career might be awesome for bootstrapping one's skill and career. Most consultants I've seen have switched positions after a year and a half or less. There are some who…

I started my software career in consulting, and I echo this comment 100%. It’s a great way to build your skills, but it is not a great source of stability and there can be lots of crunch time depending on where you work. They say the hottest fires forge the strongest steel :) I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities I was given as a consultant, and for the experience I gained, but long-term it’s not really the lifestyle for me.

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

#168

Post by Rapzid »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #150
Rapzid wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seven years is quite a long time. That's just over two whole years at three separate companies! For somebody that can execute that's plenty of time to build a portfolio of accomplishments.

Agreed, but these are accomplishments at two years of expertise level. Two years is enough time to understand something, and that's generally the time required to demonstrate a promotion from "junior engineer" to "engineer" at big corporations. I guess it depends on your definition of generalist. I expect at least 3-4 areas of senior level expertise, which is 15-28 years in the business. Our definitions differ if you…

On the other hand according to the Foreign Service Institute(Department of State) it takes about 1k hours for a native English speaker to reach "proficiency" at speaking and reading "Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English": Level 4.

If your full-time job for seven years were learning spoken languages, you could become proficient in 14 of them. Or maybe you want want to learn 7 of them and leave room for nearly all level 1-3 languages. Maybe you just want to spend 2 hours a day M-F(you slacker!), you'll only be able to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, and.. Dutch.

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

#169

Post by cloverich »

bsanr2 wrote: post #107
rdbell wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people like to use examples like this to argue that people with family loans have an easy path to success. $44k is an excellent launchpad but the reality is that most people given opportunity to take $44k would quickly turn it into $0. I personally love hearing success stories like this and give full credit to people that can pull it off.

That's partly because most people will have baggage to attend to that a college student living off student loans would not, and will lack the safety net that parents who can loan you $44k represent. There's not much here to convince that his performance is any better than the average among people in his position.

You think turning a 44k loan into multiple successful businesses is average?

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

#170

Post by cloverich »

ScottFree wrote: post #9
robviren wrote: post #7

Product manager is great for generalist. I was a programmer who enjoyed technical challenge, but I eventually realized if I wanted to guide the direction of projects I would have to join the business side. The challenge is endless, diverse, and there is no perfect solution to the problem if people. It is a strange domain, but being technical is nice when working with development. Worth a try if you are in to that

Let's say a programmer was looking to make that change. Where would he start? Are there training programs? What kind of company would provide a gentle introduction? Is it easier to navigate the politics of a small company creating their own product compared to a large consulting company that provides staff augmentation services?

One thought is to start doing it. Just start cutting out time to do pm stuff: research competitors. Make a presentation highlighting a competitors feature. Dig into your products analytics and do your own analysis. Attend a usability study. Pilot one if your company doesn’t do them. Brainstorm a new feature, solicit feedback, present the results. Ask existing pms about their jobs, what they need help with. Etc. If you like doing this stuff, you’ll get good at it. At the very least you will be more qualified for the role when you do officially get it.
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