Okay, I admit, that is one of the more accurate descriptions of myself I have seen. I wonder if I could get a tiny bit of career advice here. Currently I basically have a couple of old employers that are quite happy to take me in for a few months a time to do something (financial regulation/risk management of derivatives is a powerhose of things not solved/done well enough) The trouble is, I'd like still to do something else on my career, and I have been flirting a bit with infosec, playing hackthebox etc, and pentesting might be fun. I acknowledge starting an infosec career would be a pay cut, but I am not that worried about that. What I am worried is that I have this nightmare of a infosec job where I spend my time running standard scripts and producing standard reports to customers, instead of this probably naive idea of getting to really scratch my head and hack around new problems (obviously some reporting is unavoidable) Is it possible to avoid the nightmare, if yes, how? Or should I just be happy with my current contracting gigs?
What Is a Wildcard Person?
141–150 of 278 posts
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#14217 years ago, there was a popular essay about this sort of person, and the label at the time was "Free Electron": https://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/ Before that, they were known as "generalists", autodidacts, polymaths, etc. The thing is that pretty much any clever person that's easily invested in novel things can become one of these people, so this label isn't reserved for people who are generalists,…
Hm. I don’t know.
As a “generalist” myself, I find it sometimes hard to find a new job (as it’s hard to describe what exactly you did), but once I land a new job, I somehow become a person that just can’t be fired, and bring a lot of value to the team.
However, what I CAN recommend for such people and what did help me is to move more into management. If you are a jack of all trades, you can also quite easily tell what will take what time, and how much are people bullshitting you. And learn some JIRA/scrum shibboleths on the way, and you become quite a good manager.
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#143I was this person on a team once. My boss called me the "free range chicken". I think it was a compliment...
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#144This is targeted at a would-be wildcard manager, but for those of you who identify this way, how do you describe this skillset? I’m a combination product manager, data engineer, strategy consultant, and UX/UI designer. While everyone I’ve ever worked with sees that I really am capable across those roles in time, it’s been challenging to convey the breadth of expertise to a hiring manager, without seeming quite arroga…
Lmao exactly I had a job interview yesterday and I think the interviewer did took me as arrogant and did everything he could to shoot me down and even told me that I don't have "the thing" in me, which kinda drained me for the day but is funny to be in such a occurence where the last 3 years I got promoted each year and in my current company I got promoted after only 6 months from employment start. But yea it is difficult to exactly reply on what I do, while I basically do the job of 3-4 departments until things are sorted and fixed and currently in the day to day basis, so yea that hits home a lot.
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#145This is me, this is how I generate value as a full-blown ADHD case. I wonder if there’s a correlation? To add credibility in a corporate setting I have somehow achieved a fearsome combination of Physics PhD, MBA and 25 years of wildcard software development / entrepreneurship. That, combined, legitimizes why I’m allowed to be the wildcard. How have you others managed to be this deep generalist in a specialist’s world…
This entire article was born from conversations I was having when doing research for my book on ADHD ( https://adhdpro.xyz/ ), so it’s a pretty strong correlation I would say :)
"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." I'll check the book out.
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The algorithms they ask for in interviews are so low level that any programmer could learn them in a couple of months, that is generalist level and not specialist level. Not all developers who pass them are generalists, but the people who don't aren't generalist developers. They could be generalist problems solvers who dabbles a bit in programming, but they aren't generalist developers.
HN has been over the Leetcode interview discussion a thousand times, and it's more complicated than a sentence can argue, so we can agree to disagree on Leetcode interviews. :)
Most objections to leetcode are from specialist developers who argue they aren't specialists at algorithms.
I'd expect most generalist developers to know algorithms well. Why? Generalists steps up when specialists are outside of their speciality. Very few teams has specialist algorithm experts, so instead generalists has to step up and solve those problems. If you don't step up in those situations then you aren't a generalist developer, I'm sorry to say it. Most developers are specialists, like most people, including the people here.
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#147Something about this feels "horoscopy". Meaning most people who read this will think "that's me!". I wonder if that is the intent.
Is that accurate? If so there's way more wildcard types on HN than I've bumped into. I need to move to somewhere more wildcard heavy! When this article says wildcard I think "that's me!" because I do anything from web dev (actual role) to sysadmin (preferred role) to IT security to GDPR compliance to billing clients to looking for new clients to project management to hiring to data admin to research and development (…
The list you give is very much what I consider normal software developer job (only even a bit wildcard-y is the billing). Any competent developer should be able to write web stuff, maintain their machine and handle setting up and maintaining servers, they should know about common security problems in the kind of product they are developing and GDPR compliance is pretty much a TODO list of data management features.
It is not like you are developing software today and tomorrow working in the kitchen making cakes and yesterday you were laying some asphalt.
I could give anyone of in my team task to prototype Kubernetes cluster. It is just normal computer stuff, but with a new/different tool. It is still very much under the same scope as other skills they need to be able to do their job.
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#14817 years ago, there was a popular essay about this sort of person, and the label at the time was "Free Electron": https://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/ Before that, they were known as "generalists", autodidacts, polymaths, etc. The thing is that pretty much any clever person that's easily invested in novel things can become one of these people, so this label isn't reserved for people who are generalists,…
> If you care about things like income and career progression, do not let yourself become one of these people. They aren't valued, and it doesn't take a lot of staring at job postings or talking to hiring managers to figure out why. I have the opposite experience. Being a generalist allowed me to "climb" fast at my current company as I am able to lead projects holistically and coordinate cross-functional teams. I hav…
I think at some level specialists need to become generalists, or they will get stuck.
For a junior backend engineer, it might be okay to not know much about UX design, front end development, database administration, etc.
But at a certain level, you need to know about all the fields outside of your specialization as well. You need to understand why you are doing what you are doing, or you'll end up doing a bad job at it.
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#149Brethren, this is I.
In a $bigcorp this is a problem because a lot of people don't want problems solved. Instead of being glad a problem is solves they will get pissed you stepped on their toes. Something that takes maybe 30min for me to do, some person/team expects me to wait weeks, months or years for them to do it. Problem is, I am not in IT-proper,devops or SWE. I work in security so "problems" are stuff that can land us on a news headline so I do piss people off and fix stuff.
Interviews are also hard. They try to put me in some bucket and it is difficult. If I mention something I had to do to get something done, suddenly they think that's all I should do.
I am on my second job right now(in a row) where they had to create a new job title for me. But in the last few years, the infosec world has adapted a bit and now there are titles for people like me. "The guy that gets a lot of access and does whatever to catch/stop/respond to intruders".
It is also the hardest for people of this personality to appear to be teamworkers. If I collaborate with someone (let's say an incident response task) and I am done with my tasks and they're taking their time, I have to take over their task and finish it. In a bigcorp this is a problem because everyone wants credits and visibility. So for the actual team members I look good but for managers not so much. They see me as a liability unless I am careful and solve problems quietly and let others take credit when possible. But the person whose task I took over or mistake I fixed gets angry, doesn't matter how nicely I do things.
This was so not a problem in a startup culture (unless you create work for others).
Edit/Unrelated: my account is restricted because apparently I post "low value" content (still not sure if that is a code word or what it means), can you tell if and why the above comment is "low value"?
Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?
#15017 years ago, there was a popular essay about this sort of person, and the label at the time was "Free Electron": https://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/ Before that, they were known as "generalists", autodidacts, polymaths, etc. The thing is that pretty much any clever person that's easily invested in novel things can become one of these people, so this label isn't reserved for people who are generalists,…
> If you care about things like income and career progression, do not let yourself become one of these people. They aren't valued, and it doesn't take a lot of staring at job postings or talking to hiring managers to figure out why. I have the opposite experience. Being a generalist allowed me to "climb" fast at my current company as I am able to lead projects holistically and coordinate cross-functional teams. I hav…
Re John Carmack. Seeing his journal, strongly a generalist that adapt.
I mean look at how they ran Armadillo. It was just a bunch of random problem solving constantly.