[zeroonetwothree]

Google hires tons of generalists. The reasoning here is very flawed.

Hiring specialists is higher variance. They could be amazing for your company or it could be that you need to do something slightly different and they are mostly useless. Generalists are safer but with less upside.

Of course this dichotomy is false anyway. Everyone exists on a spectrum. No one has only a single skill at “max level” and no one has every skill. It’s more a question of where on the spectrum you want to be.

[asdfman123]

This whole article isn't very insightful but people upvoted it because they like what the title says.

Google needs to hire generalists because they need to hire any good developer as there's a talent shortage (or at least a talent identification shortage).

And most generalists are generalists because that's what their jobs have required, and can become specialists shortly.

Finally, as a side node, a benefit of being a generalist that the article doesn't mention: you can cross apply good ideas from different domains. You can say "X language does Y -- maybe we could apply that idea to our existing code base. "

[numpad0]

I don't think that's flawed, that just says they wants coders, not talents. They're known for good pays and cream of the crop employees, that doesn't mean their business requires or relies on those irregular capacities. They very well could be "daily driving a 911" so to speak, while nerds around assume they track it.

[forkexec]

Most them are SA-/SW-SREs, SRMs or other technical leads or managers.

[hopia]

I was also thinking if it's like generalist in tech. Or does Google seriously expect their software engineering recruits to generalists who are proficient in design, copy writing, B2B sales, digital marketing, management etc.?

Edit: phrasing