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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?

#191

Post by atmosx »

The SRE role seems to be the most wide role there is. By definition you'd have to build systems in a highly available fashion some guarantees. Systems like databases, queues and orchestrators. You will have to be part of the design of the deployment pipeline, the user management, the secrets management, etc. Hell you might end up being part of the security boundaries too (container, node, namespace?).

Since you'll most likely be part of setting up the deployment pipeline, you have to understand to some extend various git flows. You might end-up consulting developers on how to build applications that will run on a docker container, what are the best practices and what pattern the app must follow (e.g. circuit breaker) in a micro-services environment.

You surely will want to automate some management. So apart from DSLs like terraform and configuration management systems (puppet, chef, saltstack, ansible) you will have to write some API here and there, an application tailored around the need of your systems. This application might end up being written in python, ruby, golang or C.

Now, consider that you have build the CI/CD, the orchestrator, alongside the entire pipeline and logic to drive an application from staging to production. You'll most likely be on call and you'll have to deal with networking issues at TCP, HTTP or DNS level, load balancing, autoscaling, etc. You might have a say on that query which is too heavy because the data is un-indexed because, well brings down the database every now and then.

There is no role I can think of in a modern institution which has the breadth of technologies that an SRE (or DevOps engineer as they are often called) will have to gain expertise.

In short you have to be: A medium-level programmer in terms of concepts, have networking experience, learn dozens of new tech, face ever-evolving problems eventually at scale, design end-to-end systems, debug applications others written sometimes without having context, understand trade-offs of new tech stacks only to explain it to others (which might end in a PITA due to the back-and-forth but you'll eventually end up knowing lots of things you didn't ever thought about).

If you like all that, then an SRE role is ideal IMO even in medium to big corps.

NOTE: The role could be called SRE, DevOps engineer, Infrastructure Engineer and/or quite a few other things depending on where you work. Responsibilities tend to overlap significantly though.

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

#192

Post by jklein11 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #140
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…

I support this approach. I learned a lot about online marketing and selling physical products by purchasing a struggling online shop. There's even dedicated web pages like flippa.com or empireflippers.com

I know this is probably anecdotal but have you found that buying a struggling online shop was worth the money vs starting from scratch?

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

#193

Post by 0xff00ffee »

Rapzid wrote: post #168
0xff00ffee wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Funny, there's a submission on HN today about a person learning french to "B2" level in 12 months, and this guide was provided:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...

I didn't know there was a stratification!

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

#194

Post by ahane »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #139
yibg wrote: post #118

Put in a bit of a different view point here. I was the generalist a while ago too. Worked at a consulting firm that did custom builds with small teams, so not only did everything technology wise but also interacting with clients. So did part of developer, account management, sales, dev ops etc roles. Also did everything from backend to mobile in different frameworks and environments. I thought the same, that I was a…

Point 3 is a good one, I would just aim at \pi rather than T, just in case.

how about semi-colon shaped https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/semicolon-shaped-people

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

#195

Post by Can_Not »

perl4ever wrote: post #159
purerandomness wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it answers a different type of question: What you would do if you wouldn't have to work for a living, for the next six months . While interesting, most of us can't relate to this situation. Having half a year worth of "fun money" to spend bootstrapping a business idea, or investng in one, is skipping the first step. It's like one of these "draw the rest of the fucking owl" jokes: How to become rich: 1. Get 44…

You're saying $44K = rich, and that normal income = $88K. If you make $88K then you can have $44K to blow just by only spending $44K, like the people who only make $44K anyway . (Yes, yes, ignoring taxes)

I get $88K by working fulltime for $X months. Getting $44K _for free_ and then also having an entire fulltime of availability to work on a project is quite a gamechanger.

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

#196

Post by Can_Not »

Spooky23 wrote: post #87
exterrestrial wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first acquisition was funded by a loan from my parents for $44K. Thanks for being honest. It might help to put this in the first comment though.

If you have some hustle anyone can raise that type of money. When I worked retail in college, a coworker was able to get $150k together to lease a 737 and crew for a couple of trips. He was then able to leverage his girlfriend’s boss (travel agent) to get some trips to Aruba and some other island. He netted enough to pay for his tuition, which was the goal.

The conveniently skipped over "getting the initial 150k" is the part of your story that most likely contradicts "anyone can".

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

#197

Post by chrisbennet »

I gave this advice just today: Don't call yourself "A jack of all trades" on a resume or in an interview.

Instead refer to yourself as a "Swiss Army knife" or something.

The reason is that "A jack of all trades." is often (mentally at least) followed by "Master of none".

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

#199

Post by renaudg »

atmosx wrote: post #191

The SRE role seems to be the most wide role there is. By definition you'd have to build systems in a highly available fashion some guarantees. Systems like databases, queues and orchestrators. You will have to be part of the design of the deployment pipeline, the user management, the secrets management, etc. Hell you might end up being part of the security boundaries too (container, node, namespace?). Since you'll mo…

I've been an SRE / DevOps for nearly 20 years (well, the role has changed quite a bit since it was called "sysadmin") and wanted to thank you for this excellent description.

I often wonder whether I should start pivoting to full-stack or at least back-end development, in order to better position myself for technical cofounder / startup CTO opportunities (DevOps expertise isn't the most valuable skillset in the first few months. Ability to quickly whip a product prototype together at a hackathon is.)

But you've just reminded me why I love my job so much !

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

#200

Post by cpitman »

eropple wrote: post #49
cpitman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Has the IBM acquisition started to affect you guys yet?

Not really. From our perspective, IBM is a partner (we have lots of those) that we just happen to have alignment on both sides to work more with. That means that on the sales side we spend more time trying to find ways to collaborate. Usually there is this long awkward dance with a partner, where you're not sure who is committed and how committed they are. The IBM acquisition cuts a lot of that out, we know that we're tied together so we have to figure out how to partner together, even if we are two separate companies.

On the actual consulting side, 95%+ of consultants have seen no impact. Those that are being impacted are working on projects that have more IBM products involved. For example, some of my team is starting to work with OpenShift on Z.

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