[theboss]

My question is this:

Startups I see here are usually looking for the same kinds of people to help build their products (Rails, iOS, UI/UX, etc.).

They look to really only hire people who are really good at things like this to build their product. Are these people the best people to have around later? Once your company has bigger problems than just getting something out the door are these people a hinderance?

I don't want to sound like these people are not smart but being REALLY good at one thing generally means you are lacking in other domains (only so many hours in the day right?)

I ask because I'm honestly curious. I'm not involved in the startup world at all but this was always a question I had when reading job postings here.

[skrebbel]

I've wondered about exactly the same. Are generalists appreciated at all in the startup world?

[invalidOrTaken]

You have to be careful with the word "generalist." It specifies a (lack of) specialization, not an absolute level of competence.

People who are equally mediocre at everything are worthless. People who are savvy and hustle at everything are worth their weight in gold. But it's hard to sell that.

[Robin_Message]

Yes, the good ones become CTOs at startups :-)

No-one appreciates a bad generalist, but a good generalist, who can pick up any piece of code or system you happen to have lying around or need to work with (e.g. can use tcpdump to debug a problem connecting to a client's server, or write a useful shell script, or do some C# coding for an integrated version of your Ruby app) is worth their weight in bitcoins.

[enjo]

My preference, as a (long-time) startup CTO, is to always hire generalists. The work at a startup tends to be varied and require people with lots of flexibility. I can't imagine anyone would hire any other way.

[meowface]

I've never founded or worked for a startup, but I would imagine that especially at the early stages, all your engineers will need to be pretty good generalists. You're (probably) going to need a website, a product frontend, a product backend, an infrastructure, etc... And if that work's being split between 3 - 8 people, most of them are going to have be generalists.

[theboss]

Maybe in 2004 but this is 2013. Rails, iOS, Digitalocean, heroku, aws, with a front-end designer. You no longer need to know anything about infrastructure.

[czbond]

Until you scale. I've met too many developers who say this until they're in a high growth environment.

[theboss]

My original point exactly. They get all these rails cloud heroku iOS guys and then how aren't the startups trapped? Ive never seen a job posting for an infrastructure all-around-guy

[czbond]

Fair. I've seen a lot of 'full stack' or 'back end' engineer postings - which i think is 'their version' of an infrastructure guy. If you think about it, how would a designer who has mainly pushed pixels describe that type of offering besides 'back end'?

[meowface]

>Ive never seen a job posting for an infrastructure all-around-guy

I've seen plenty of such job postings, though typically for big boring companies; not startups.

[czbond]

IMHO - By generalist - he also means closing customers, finding new clients, and crafting value props.

[jtbigwoo]

I suspect it has more to do with not wanting to train somebody rather than not wanting generalists. Once you get in, you'll be expected to do a little bit of everything if the company is small.

[rfnslyr]

Coders are the construction workers of the computer world. Software Engineers are the Architects of the computer world.