[caseymarquis]

Practically speaking, as a developer applying to a startup, I'm going to say I'm a generalist and make a giant list of technologies and projects I've worked with. If applying at Bigco, I'm going to list the relevant specialties they're looking for and not confuse the poor person working in HR who has no idea what any of those technologies are. Specializing in all of the technologies the article listed isn't exactly a herculean feat.

If a position requires an actual specialist, a "We're forking Postgres and building a globally distributed database with acid transactions committed to all AWS regions without having to think about the topology of node deployment." kind of specialist, I'm not going to apply, and we've hit the point where you actually need to think about becoming a specialist.

As I get older, I'm learning that understanding technology is just the tip of the iceberg anyway. It doesn't matter how well engineered a solution is when Google Sheets solves 90% of the same problem for free with real time networking functionality. And that doesn't matter either, when ITAR restrictions keep you from using Google Sheets.