[nchuhoai]

Interesting idea. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I love the full stack and want to pursue it as my post-grad career. That being said, it seems like full-stack people are only really valuable in situations in which their full-stack capabilities of wearing multiple hats is competitively needed.

IMO, that only happens in the early stages of a startup or temporary resource constrained company (i.e. a project etc.). I.e. the working arrangements are in somewhat temporary in nature.

So the biggest issue I see with become a full stack developer is how to chase after these inevitable temporary work arrangements. That's my biggest hesitation: How do I make sure I have a constant stream of work if I assume that my current gig/work is gonna be limited in time.

I'm no expert, but I don't expect the conveyance of skills to be a major problem, it's more like a matching problem of people who need something done, but can't afford to hire multiple people for that.

[ckinsey]

Good points.

First off, thanks for checking out the site. You are absolutely correct that full-stack engineers are _not_ needed at organizations of every size and structure. They are, in my experience, in the highest demand in any organization that has a small to medium size technical team. The reality is that many teams of this size exist--there are far more small teams than their are large ones in the workforce. I come from a background in news media, specifically newspapers. Let me tell you that EVERY news organization, even at the local level, needs full stack developers. Almost none of them need, for example, an Angular.js specialist.

Larger organizations, especially proper software companies, can afford to diversify their workforce into highly focused and manageable skillets. But, that does not mean there is no place for the full stack engineer in these companies. Positions like Operations Managers, Data Architects, Heads of Technology, Directors of Application Development and even some Project Managers are filled very well by candidates with full stack engineering backgrounds.

So its important to note that these positions do exist in organizations of all sizes and in many cases, they are a fast moving career path into management. I do recommend this path post grad--I've been working as a full stack developer for nearly a decade, and the biggest struggle I've had is having to turn down work. That's exactly why I started this project, because I have more jobs coming across my desk than I can apply for.

In my personal experience recently as Head of Technology for a startup company, conveyance of skills really was a big challenge for us. We needed highly capable engineers, and headhunters were throwing us lots of unqualified talent. That's a tough pill to swallow when you are paying many thousands of dollars just to _search_ for talent on a startup's budget. I felt that had I been given some very quality insight into the skills of the talent pool, I could have done a much better job of vetting the candidates myself for our specific needs--another concept that pushed me to start this project!

-Casey

[nollidge]

And it really depends on how the company breaks down their development teams. Some do it by function, but some large enterprises divide things by business area - so you'll have a team for accounting, one for packaging, one for manufacturing, etc. In that sort of structure, generalists are much more valuable.

[scotth]

There's nothing saying a full-stack developer can't focus on one area when needed? It's not as if you've specialized in generality -- you're just interested in everything.

[ckinsey]

Exactly. On my teams the idea is much less "we need you to work on everything" and much more "we need you to be able to work on ANY ONE THING when the need arises."