131–140 of 231 posts
Not for a moment and I'm closing in on 40. It's fun and you can absolutely take some time to play with AI and dedicate as much attention as you want to it and no more.
I was curious about this area as well and took a dive for a bit. I've learned things I already applied to infra autoscaling and some support apps for medical clinics. It's been enough for me at that point, but there's also nothing stopping me playing with it further in the future.
When I send my CV for a specific company, I delete unrelevant parts for the role and add my experience related to the field of the company, so basically every company get a unique CV of mine.
Makes sense to me now. Working on the same technology for more than a few months and I get terribly bored. So I keep learning new stuff and staying entertained and motivated. The more I learn, the more I am valuable to my clients.
Most companies don't need a hammer. They have all sorts of problems and need someone to fix them. One day it's the Ruby backend, the other it's the database server. How quickly can you learn, adapt and create value? And for that rare and very specific problem, you call the world-class specialist for two billable weeks. The remaining 50 weeks of the year, they need you and your expertise.
Don't forget that software engineering keeps becoming wider, more complicated and accelerating. You have to keep apace with it, or you'll find you're a fantastic expert at a JS library that nobody has been using for the past 5 years, which is archaeologic in software terms. It's exhausting, but if you stop staying abreast of technology, catching up becomes increasingly difficult.
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…
My Ask HN post about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32317514
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.
Great advice there.
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 think the question is more who a generalist markets to. Some people have multiple resume's depending on what they apply for, they come in through one angle and then build some trust and take over more. Or it's a startup that needs help, but doesn't really know what they need help with.
The fundamental mistake is that people think that just because someone is specialized on a topic he's also good at it.
Being a generalist certainly makes cocktail parties more interesting. Being a little good at everything makes you more employable as well, you don't get locked into 1 niche. The T-shaped person is the ideal. You should be great at 1 thing and decent at many other things, but always keep the T-shape. Keep an identity to center your varied experiences around. It will keep the main thing and the auxiliary things interes…
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…
Don't use "full stack engineer", these days for recruiters and HR it means "knows Node.js and React", which is sad and frustrating. My Ask HN post about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32317514
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Kubernete…
As a generalist, you've not only got my goat, you just took it to town and got it drunk. This sort of over reasoning is part of what bugs me about this industry. Many devs change jobs at the drop of a hat, turnover is already high. Yet here you are, worried about job retention, trying to second guess what a dev knows about their own happiness. I know you mean well, both for the org, and the person, but what makes you…
I'm not second guessing anything, in fact my comment says the exact opposite. If a developer reworks their LinkedIn to highlight some expertise they're interested in working on, then I fully trust them on that and will gladly hire them.
I'm not sure where your whole angle of not trusting developers to know their own happiness comes from. But let me be clear, if you're a generalist with relevant experience I will definitely ask you to come over for an interview. I'm not throwing valuable resumes in the trash. But during the interview I will be frank about what the job entails, and I'll gauge your response to figure out if you'll be content. Whether I'm effective or not I don't know, but I'm going to have to at least try to get the right person at the right position.
edit: BTW I'm not just saying this as a CTO at a small startup, I'm also saying this as a generalist with highly valuable frontend skills and I pray to god I don't have to get into another frontend job (either directly, or by being lured into it after applying as a generalist).