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Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#101

Post by woutr_be »

micahbule wrote: post #86
woutr_be wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed that when interviewing, the more specialized technical people often look down on full stack engineers, whereas managers are more excited about it. I consider myself full stack, but in my last role I presented myself as a frontend engineer, with some backend experience. Eventually this role just kinda expanded into both frontend and backend. Now that I do contract work, I present myself as whatever they…

Specialized technical people often look down on supposed fullstack engineers because specialized technical people value mastery over familiarity -- something a lot of FS engineers really try to be exaggeratingly proud of. While familiarity with your stack is great for cross-cutting concerns, mastery is what truly builds great software, not to mention in a timely manner. Managers are excited about FS engineers simply…

> While familiarity with your stack is great for cross-cutting concerns, mastery is what truly builds great software, not to mention in a timely manner.

I fully disagree with that. Great software isn't just about what stack you have mastered, great software is build by people who can do whatever it takes to build great software, and that's not necessarily just about your stack.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#103

Post by yieldcrv »

No

There will periodically be times when the corporate sector doesn’t know what to do with you, and not hire you

but its better to be able to build anything you want

other people need 6-figures of capital just to hire a developer or two

you are the developer capital and just need 3-figures for everything else spent on Fiverr

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#104

Post by crnkofe »

I used to call myself a full-stack engineer. This worked a decade ago since I was earlier in my career and worked at places where implementing feature end-to-end from design, frontend to backend was standard practice. However there was a turning point a few years ago when I started to have real problems finding companies that still want to hire generalists. I'm not sure if that's just my bad luck or places like that just dried up.

In theory all companies like adaptable people. In practice I find most job descriptions prefer specialists nowadays. Coding interviews and job posting requirements are also very targeted to a specific skillset. Looking back it'd be a better choice to pick a specialization for up-to 4 years and retrain myself every now and then to paradigm/framework/language-du-jour rather than being proficient in everything and a master of none. As a specialist I'm more marketable, have a better workday/quality of life and fit better into teams that need a particular skillset.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#106

Post by drewcoo »

jhoelzel wrote: post #90
jameshush wrote: post #62

Pro tip: you're not a generalist. A big chunk of specializing is how you package/market yourself. I consider myself a "full stack employee". I've done backend, frontend, hosted live events, some sales, marketing, a dash of HR, pretty much everything. Do I write that on my LinkedIn? Heck no. A year or so ago I looked at all the experience I had, saw I had a through-line story of how I've worked on video projects over…

Kubernetes Devops guy checking in - this is the way! Also think about it from the company side: Would you rather hire someone that solves your "exact" problem, or the one-man Army that -could- do everything? Which matters to you?

> Would you rather hire someone that solves your "exact" problem, or the one-man Army that -could- do everything? Which matters to you?

Well . . . people always assume they have the answers, so they've designed an exact position to do what they think they need.

But if they need it and can't fulfill the need themselves, they probably don't know what they need.

The company, composed of vain people, is more likely to hire someone that solves their "exact" not-really-problem.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#107

Post by tinco »

jhoelzel wrote: post #90
jameshush wrote: post #62

Pro tip: you're not a generalist. A big chunk of specializing is how you package/market yourself. I consider myself a "full stack employee". I've done backend, frontend, hosted live events, some sales, marketing, a dash of HR, pretty much everything. Do I write that on my LinkedIn? Heck no. A year or so ago I looked at all the experience I had, saw I had a through-line story of how I've worked on video projects over…

Kubernetes Devops guy checking in - this is the way! Also think about it from the company side: Would you rather hire someone that solves your "exact" problem, or the one-man Army that -could- do everything? Which matters to you?

I'd rather hire someone who is effective and passionate about solving problems in a particular space. If I hire a full stack web developer, and then they burn out because I had only frontend tickets for them for half a year, that's not so nice.

I don't mind rebranding your LinkedIn to make it look like you're the Kubernetes DevOps guy, as long as that means you're totally fine with working the DevOps for my Kubernetes clusters for the foreseeable future.

In an ideal world we could shove around generalist developers to whatever is necessary at the moment, but the reality is each developer is a human with hopes and dreams and ambitions and not every role will fit those.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#108

Post by drewcoo »

cyberge99 wrote: post #32
eimrine wrote: post #5

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

- Robert Heinlein

Thank you for that. Please ignore me and vote parent up.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12051-a-human-being-should-...

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

#109

Post by dijit »

cerved wrote: post #95
micahbule wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialized technical people often look down on supposed fullstack engineers because specialized technical people value mastery over familiarity -- something a lot of FS engineers really try to be exaggeratingly proud of. While familiarity with your stack is great for cross-cutting concerns, mastery is what truly builds great software, not to mention in a timely manner. Managers are excited about FS engineers simply…

The idea that you can't be great at very different things isn't confined to software engineering. I think it's because most people can only master one thing so they can't imagine other people working differently

To be perfectly fair though even “mastering” backend is quite close to impossible.

You’ve probably heard of the 10,000 hour rule, it’s a hard and fast rule to say that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of doing something to fully master it.

Maybe not true in all cases; but consider the suite of tools you have to be practicing every day to do even a single role: VCS/DVCS, shell, OS fundamentals, build-systems, networking, DNS… now we have distributed computing concepts such as kubernetes and various DSLs, then there’s your programming language(s), their standard libraries, their extended contrib libraries.

Completely non-exhaustive list and we’re already closing in on 5 years working full time for each of those.

The sheer hubris of assuming you can throw together a few frameworks and understand 1 or 2 paradigms and then claim you know “the whole stack” is immature and exhausting; similar to the sysadmins of yore who could read QuickStarts and claim to know how to maintain software fully.

Delivering business value is definitely what we’re trying to do, but when it comes down to it: engineering is understanding; and nobody can claim to understand everything, not with a straight face.

Full Stack is either: the most senior you can be or the most surface level you can be.

If the former: we can’t afford you and I’m not sure how you managed to keep all your skills up to date.

If the latter then specialists will need to clean up after you anyway.

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