Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by arcturus17 1303 days ago
> Remember back when devs were called programmer/analysts? Exactly for that.

I remember, and I am business PM or business analyst and full-stack developer. Like I said in another comment replying to GP, I can totally see why many orgs separate the roles. It's messy. I need to fit the following activities in my schedule:

- Doing user research / speaking to customers

- Project management

- Basic UX, up to wireframing

- Design-as-I-code skills

- And of course, full-stack development, with all that this entails

Let me tell you, it can get crazy. I wouldn't change it for anything because I love being a generalist, but I'm surprised I cope sometimes. I have about 12 years of experience where I've done PM/BA, dev, or both at the same time and I often feel I haven't reached 70% of my potential.

I also hire devs and would only maybe trust 1 in 10 with this breadth of responsibilities. It's not that they aren't smart enough - some are infinitely smarter than me -, it's that they haven't been exposed to this breadth of tasks. Many of them wouldn't want to, either.

The roles have been separated because specialization is a law of nature in many contexts.