[75dvtwin]

Hiring SREs is costly...

Hiring narrowly focused people with significant pre-existing experience -- Is always costly.

... and I also think, it is practically always a wrong strategy...

I am fundamentally against micro-managing labor pools by federal government.

However, there are need to be economic incentives (including immigration policies) -- that make it more difficult for employers to hire for 'tool-centric' positions, unless those tools are very expensive physical devices (eg telescopes, quantum computers, etc).

The incentives need to direct employers at training on the job (not at after-work online classes).

When I see on HN's hire threads -- 'if you have Azure experience -- you will get on top of the pile' -- I cringe.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Same pretty much with Ruby/Php Rust/C++ Haskell/Scala modalities of the same problem.

Yes hire people who understand process/idioms/patters, but invest in the f..ing training -- if you need somebody 'yesterday' to help, get consultants -- and have them help and at the same time hire for full time roles -- and train your internal stuff (possibly, even, have them learn from the consultants).

Afraid of people leaving after acquiring the highly thought-out skills ?

-- implement meaningful compensation/retention policies that reflect effort that you spend on training, and risks that you are taking if a person who was just trained -- leaves.

[winrid]

What you are saying is generalists are cheaper to hire and that you can train them. That's true.

That's why, as a seller (worker) you should try to specialize in at least one area to sell yourself better.

[pjmlp]

Speaking from experience, it sells better to bring along special soft skills in the package, than yet another technology stack.

Too many coders, generalists or not, cannot engange properly talking to something that isn't a computer.

Those that manage to merge coding skills, with UI/UX, marketing, understanding the customer point of view, already have an upper hand.

[winrid]

Yes, you need soft skills too. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't specialize in something. That doesn't have to be a tech stack either, in fact it's the last thing I would suggest.

[75dvtwin]

That's part of it.

I am also saying that there needs to be a system of incentives, that then, produces, organizational/hiring practices that favor non-tool-specific employment process.

[winrid]

Well, for that your company has to admit it it doesn't have specific problems. Because if you do have specific problems, it's probably more efficient to hire people that can handle those.