[alephnerd]

Yes, but most people (especially a large portion on HN and Reddit) do not internalize it.

A SWE who has always worked in DevTooling companies will always be preferred by DevTooling companies over a generalist. A SWE who has always worked in AdTech will always be preferred by AdTech companies over a generalist. etc etc.

Software fundamentals - though useful - are table stakes skills at this point. No business wants to deal with the headache of on-ramping employees who have never worked in a specific domain or industry because it takes too long for a generalist employee to build the intuition needed to understand that segment of the industry.

[59nadir]

> Software fundamentals - though useful - are table stakes skills at this point.

I'm having a difficult time even seeing what we're talking about here. I see "seniors" in our industry that don't know what I would call the fundamentals of programming or software development; apparently not all fundamentals are created equal.

[classified]

> No business wants to deal with the headache of on-ramping employees who have never worked in a specific domain or industry…

The usual sickness. If you don’t train people to become specialists and just expect them to fall from the sky, it’s only a question of time until you run out of specialists.

[alephnerd]

The tech industry is significantly larger now than it was a decade ago. Large self-sufficient talent pools of SWEs, Designers, PMs, PMMs, and SEs/AEs exist for most subsegments of tech now.

Additionally, limiting early career hiring to to T10/20 CE/CS/ECE/EECS programs (they tend to graduate around 10K students a year), veterans (they tend to have the "can-do" and fast learning mindset needed), and a couple regional schools is more than enough to build a self-sustaining early career pipeline for just about any segment of tech indefinitely.

[chipsrafferty]

And therefore there will be a huge knowledge gap as companies refuse to hire anyone who hasn't worked in the field for 5+ years and people who want to work in that field but haven't don't get hired.

[alephnerd]

Not really. Most people continue to remain in a specific domain from their internship days, and professional networks develop.

Historically, startups were the traditional path for a generalist to build domain expertise because most startups couldn't be picky with talent, but the market has changed.

In all honesty, too much fat did develop in the tech industry over the last 6 years. Traditional hiring pipelines (eg. Limiting early career recruiting to grads from top 10-20 CS/ECE/EECS programs nationally along with Vets and some grads from decent regional programs) still net good calibre talent worth their weight in gold, but others just aren't working out.

[adaml_623]

I'm afraid you appear to be contradicting yourself by saying internship in one comment and stating that companies don't bother with onboarding employees with no knowledge in a previous comment.

[alephnerd]

An internship is fine for onboarding becuase you aren't paying a FT employee level salary or benefits, and expectations are your hire is still learning but has some aptitude or interest in becoming a domain expert.

On the other hand, hiring a mid-career SWE who spent much of their career in one domain who is transitioning to another is a significant risk without additional social proof such as referrals where someone actually vouches for their skills.