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Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

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41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#41

Consider consulting. I like the variety of roles, and changing clients periodically keeps things fresh and exposes me to a lot of technology. I prefer working for a company so I don't have to find my own clients, and get benefits and a steady paycheck. If you can manage your own network, you can potentially earn more, but it's a lot of work finding a steady stream of clients on your own.

I hope this isn't too direct, but do you find that the pay is acceptable/comparable to non-consulting roles?

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#42

Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience, I've found most small places advertise themselves, not through agencies, so you can get a jack of all trades job there. They don't pay as well though, it's the trade off imho, interesting work that keeps you busy, or specialise and become a corporate consultant - lots of money but boring af. Other alternatives: - move into management - found your o…

100% agree on starting your own side project.

It gives you a great taste of startup life w/o a lot of the extreme downsides. Sure, you don't have all the upside, but one step at a time.

Lack of a steady paycheck is pretty crushing for most people.

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#43

Consider consulting. I like the variety of roles, and changing clients periodically keeps things fresh and exposes me to a lot of technology. I prefer working for a company so I don't have to find my own clients, and get benefits and a steady paycheck. If you can manage your own network, you can potentially earn more, but it's a lot of work finding a steady stream of clients on your own.

People are finally starting to realize that benefits are orthogonal to the mission of the company and should be replaced with increased base salaries instead. If the company spends $X on processing your $Y benefit for a year, your salary would increase by $X + $Y, and you would just (optionally) sign up into whatever programs are available to you, without much of a UX change.

I'm no expert, but I have a hard time believing the economics are this simple.

Take health insurance: I'd imagine employers are buying plans offering per-employee costs lower than if each employee were paying for their own insurance. Economies of scale, bargaining power (at least when it comes to larger firms), etc.

Perhaps at some firms the processing costs really do outweigh the savings, but I would expect this to be the exception rather than the rule.

I could be wrong -- maybe someone with experience could shed some light here.

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#44

Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience, I've found most small places advertise themselves, not through agencies, so you can get a jack of all trades job there. They don't pay as well though, it's the trade off imho, interesting work that keeps you busy, or specialise and become a corporate consultant - lots of money but boring af. Other alternatives: - move into management - found your o…

sales? how so?

evangelist? elaborate please?

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#45
In the support area, generalists can be very popular. Lots of people will just bounce issues that sound even slightly outside of their wheelhouse; being the guy who takes on cases and owns them no matter where they go will win you a lot of friends very quickly.

I don't have the lofty "Sr" in my title but I have a special designation as the "edge case SME" in the list of experts. I also do big crisis management which is pretty fun. Not a dev, so take it as you will.

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#46
My general experience has been that seniority almost implies specialisation. A good compromise is to be super skilled at one (or a few) tasks and have working knowledge of others. The former makes for a good resume and will get you hired. The latter will help you grow at the organisation you join.

https://jtauber.com/journeyman_of_some/ is a particularly eloquent way of putting it.

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#48

Consider consulting. I like the variety of roles, and changing clients periodically keeps things fresh and exposes me to a lot of technology. I prefer working for a company so I don't have to find my own clients, and get benefits and a steady paycheck. If you can manage your own network, you can potentially earn more, but it's a lot of work finding a steady stream of clients on your own.

I hope this isn't too direct, but do you find that the pay is acceptable/comparable to non-consulting roles?

Not OP, but for me, consulting has vastly outpaced pay for non-consulting roles. I’m not planning to go back to W2 again.

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#49

I find that most jobs for small companies are unspecialised Jack of all trades. The smaller the dev team, the more you will be pitching in with product design and dev ops etc. I'm not sure how you can filter for such jobs, given that job descriptions are always vague - but maybe for each job description see if you can find out the company and then research if they are a small startup for small business, or a large co…

Angellist might be a good place to start.

Re: Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience Yup. I'd add public sector work to that list (mostly because it's chronically understaffed and heavily siloed so you have to fill in a lot of roles). BigCos tend to like specialization because of consistency/efficiency. They might have a skunkworks where you can be a jack of all trades but it's hard to get hired into those roles.

> I'd add public sector work to that list Unfortunately, working your ass off for $40k and a questionably managed pension doesn't put food on the table.

Not every nation on earth underpays their public sector workers.
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