It’s a good counterpoint. Like it’s definitely something to consider. But this article isn’t about convincing a company about how it should run it’s business. It’s about giving developers freedom to become a generalist if that’s what they like (I know I do). Like seriously, if a company asks me to be only front-end or back-end, I refuse the position because I know that it won’t make me happy enough to stay motivated. But I understand that some developers have the opposite career goals. It takes all kinds of people, and a good company should understand that necessity to have diverse skill sets (specialist, generalist, etc). I’ve had to argue my value as a generalist many times, but once people observe what I add to a team, they start to get it: I’m someone who has enough range of knowledge that I can help bring a team together and ensure that a feature is delivered cohesively. Meanwhile, a generalist can also help remind the specialists on the team that each person’s job is hard and deserves appreciation (if they’ve forgotten).
Side note: full stack is much more possible when the whole stack is JS (ie NodeJS) backend. It’s a little unrealistic if it’s Ruby or Python on the backend and JS in the front end since they look so different. The context switching gets really tiresome (and I’ve experienced that first hand). That’s why I really admire the JS stack.
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It’s a good counterpoint. Like it’s definitely something to consider. But this article isn’t about convincing a company about how it should run it’s business. It’s about giving developers freedom to become a generalist if that’s what they like (I know I do). Like seriously, if a company asks me to be only front-end or back-end, I refuse the position because I know that it won’t make me happy enough to stay motivated. But I understand that some developers have the opposite career goals. It takes all kinds of people, and a good company should understand that necessity to have diverse skill sets (specialist, generalist, etc). I’ve had to argue my value as a generalist many times, but once people observe what I add to a team, they start to get it: I’m someone who has enough range of knowledge that I can help bring a team together and ensure that a feature is delivered cohesively. Meanwhile, a generalist can also help remind the specialists on the team that each person’s job is hard and deserves appreciation (if they’ve forgotten).
Side note: full stack is much more possible when the whole stack is JS (ie NodeJS) backend. It’s a little unrealistic if it’s Ruby or Python on the backend and JS in the front end since they look so different. The context switching gets really tiresome (and I’ve experienced that first hand). That’s why I really admire the JS stack.