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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?

#61

Post by chirau »

akcreek wrote: post #51

I have a wide-ranging self-taught skill set as well that I've developed over the last 14 years of running my own businesses. I'll share what I'm doing from a high level as it might not be the most common path. I've been acquiring small but promising businesses that don't have the right team in place to move them forward. I bootstrap them on my own and replace my roles as the business can afford staff. Once enough rol…

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?

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

#62

Post by duder_3569 »

cpitman wrote: post #34
topkai22 wrote: post #8

If you are a “people person” IT consulting, technical sales engineering, and other “field” based technical roles at larger companies require a lot of generalist skills. Consulting and sales engineering are a lot more technical than I expected when I moved over from product engineering. The big downside is they tend to be high travel roles.

I agree, as a consultant I have grown into a generalist over time, and consulting rewards those that do. As a concrete example, I'm at Red Hat Consulting. We have products that range from RHEL, to Kubernetes/OpenShift, to language runtimes/tools/middleware, and finally to more process focussed transformation. You can specialize, but the more of these you are competent in the more useful you become. I am in more of a…

Couldn't agree more! I love working as a Consultant at Red Hat. I do second the "soft" skills mentioned. If you're not a people person, I would say, consulting might not be for you. But it definitely rewards the generalist, jack of all trades, A.D.D. types (speaking for myself).

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

#63

Post by dorkwood »

I'm also a generalist, and I've been wondering if it might be a good idea, for my next job, to only market myself using one of my skills.

My role at the moment involves doing several different things, some of which I'm not very good at, which tends to make my work quite difficult.

I find myself being envious of other members of the team who only need to do one thing, and don't even need to do it that quickly (they probably get paid the same, too). If I had their lives, I think to myself, I wouldn't find work so exhausting.

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

#64

Post by chirau »

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

I think i love most things product manager except for probably the most important thing, managing people. Yeah, that is not my cup of tea.

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

#65

Post by sgt »

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.

Additional downside: may never take off and leave you financially ruined.

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

#66

Post by dcole2929 »

Not so much a role as the team I think a lot of people with wide reaching skill sets enjoy. The platform team. Basically responsible for cross cutting concerns between teams. Lots of infrastructure. Lots of defining best practices. Lots of jumping into projects to save them. Team kind of ends up being the roving jack of all trades team that dives into really hard projects that no one feature team has the skill set or time to focus on.

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

#67

Post by BossingAround »

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 absolutely love it and kudos to them, but those seem to be in a minority.

No idea what consultant life is at Red Hat specifically, just some general thoughts.

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

#68

Post by akcreek »

Roritharr wrote: post #60
akcreek wrote: post #51

I have a wide-ranging self-taught skill set as well that I've developed over the last 14 years of running my own businesses. I'll share what I'm doing from a high level as it might not be the most common path. I've been acquiring small but promising businesses that don't have the right team in place to move them forward. I bootstrap them on my own and replace my roles as the business can afford staff. Once enough rol…

Interesting, how did you acquire the first business and keep yourself afloat before it took off?

I was in college at the time, so student loans kept me afloat. I was definitely not using that money correctly, but I believed I was using it wisely.

The first acquisition was funded by a loan from my parents for $44K. That was a large sum for them, but they believed they would see it again and they have always wanted to help my siblings and I in any way possible. It turned out to be one of their better investments as I did return that money and a percent of profits for years.

After the first one I was able to continue self funding.

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

#69

Post by BossingAround »

travbrack wrote: post #35
hinkley wrote: post #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 devops was supposed to be but nobody does it that way. Can you elaborate on this?

Not OP, but DevOps was supposed to be one pool of people taking care of everything, from infrastructure to networking to coding the whole thing. No handovers (or as few as possible), people who specialize, yes, but can take on a whole range of issues.

If Mark the networking guy is on vacation, Jane the fullstack dev should be able to perform basic networking troubleshooting and implement some fix until Mark returns and possibly fixes it.

Turns out people who can do that are:

- incredibly expensive

- very difficult to find

That's my take. I imagine a kanban board where prioritized issues are taken not by people who specialize in that particular area, but by whoever has the time right now. Again, I've actually never seen that implemented, except maybe for companies that consist of nobody but Jane and Mark :)).

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

#70

Post by finaliteration »

I’m also a generalist and I’ve found my “place” as a systems integrator. The work requires me to know/learn a bunch of different systems and patterns and be able to transfer knowledge across domains. It requires that I understand infrastructure, programming, and distributed systems, as well as be able to collaborate with a bunch of different teams during the course of setting up integrations and messaging systems.

I really enjoy the work and I’m very rarely bored.

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