19 ms·

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence a

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

eightysixfour 9y ago
I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.
- JepZ 9y ago
  > Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism. Yeah, thats part of the pattern. Generalists often do not appear as professional as specialists (which does not mean that everybody who looks unprofessional is a generalist).
  - macawfish 9y ago
    Right. And believe me, I'm not the pinnacle of professionalism, but I have core values of respect and a motivation to do work that people find valuable. Last time I checked they are pretty well intact. I believe this person mistook specialism and accolades for professionalism.
    - majormajor 9y ago
      I think there's a difference of terms. Wanting to work 20-40 hours a month on stuff you like instead of "giving into a job" sounds pretty far from what most people are going to consider "a professional" (you work on what the job needs at the present, with standard hours, that they pay for).
    - mattgreenrocks 9y ago
      This explains why everyone in tech fights over space on the latest bandwagon every time no matter how astoundingly mediocre the latest thing is.
- macawfish 9y ago
  It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job. I think my hesitancy in this area straight up reeks to the point H.R. people/recruiters can pretty much smell it. It's just not about the money for me. If I was doing something I enjoyed and had time to work on creative projects (a.k.a. "my life's work"), I'd be fine on ~ $1000/mo (say at ~20-40 hrs/mo). But this presents difficult hiring/management challenges, the main one being the challenge of using my time effectively. When someone is always on call, management doesn't have to worry about this as much. Honestly, I think companies could get a lot more bang for their buck if they put more money into hiring people to maintain and improve on open source projects that they use. And I know that there are jobs like this out there. I just need to keep looking for one that fits me :)
  - cschep 9y ago
    The idea of failing at "giving in to a job" resonates so much with me. Thanks for taking the time to formulate this thought into words.
  - jpm_sd 9y ago
    You think you're too good for a job, hence, you are unemployed.
    - marcus_holmes 9y ago
      you think there is stigma in being unemployed.
    - super-serial 9y ago
      I went through my entire 20s thinking this, and I have strong opinions about it so sorry for this long post... Back when I quit my 9-5 job in 2006 my favorite quote was by the creator of Winamp... "For me, coding is a form of self-expression. The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have. This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leave." No company deserved me because I was a creative innovator, and even though working retail for $10/hr wasn't using my CS degree, I'd rather do that than make $70k getting someone else rich. I thought I deserved $250k since I was obviously going to get them rich - so taking the $10/hr job doing mindless work was less of a sell-out. The next 8 years I tried a lot of things, and went $20k in debt. When I reached my 30s, I realized a few things: 1. You can be a mercenary and get the skills you need for your own business while working for someone else. You learn and get faster while doing tasks for your employer, so even though the code you wrote is owned by them... the code you write for your own business will be better and done faster. 2. If you're worried about getting them rich... just do what they say instead of innovating. Most companies don't innovate, they just maintain the status-quo and have you build systems that meet existing needs and save a little bit of money. You aren't making the next Snapchat at a 9-5... and if you are, you should have equity. 3. Freedom is not just about having the time to do things.... I had all the time in the world in my twenties but no money. Being broke basically put me in a prison. I couldn't go on trips with friends, couldn't take girls out, couldn't do what I wanted because I'd have no money for it. Now that I have a full-time job and work on side projects, I have the opposite problem where I have money but no time. Overall I think having a 9-5 job works better for my lifestyle. Maybe I just needed more discipline and I could have succeeded as an Indie developer making games, marketing software, apps... and whatever other shiny thing caught my eye... but now I do that stuff on the side. I still hope I succeed as an entrepreneur and reach a point where I have complete freedom (time & money)... but now that I'm older I realize that was always a long-shot.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Another way to see the statements as non-contradictory is: since companies cannot hire people like this, they structure themselves such that such people are not required. Then, when one does happen along, the company has no place for him.
  - na85 9y ago
    Or her.
csours 9y ago
There is a massive gulf between hiring and work. There's another massive gulf between what a manager asks for and what HR or recruiters ask for. > "If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions" The process of hiring for this is hard. Finding people like this is also hard.
- rhizome 9y ago
  I got found by a ~10ppl YC company and the deal fell apart over $12K.
- pm 9y ago
  There's also gulf a between what companies think they need, and what they actually need. Almost everyone hires on technologies and not the abstract skillsets required to learn said technologies.
  - namibj 9y ago
    Any Idea how to find a company that hires on that abstract skillset, potentially by throwing one into cold water to test for it? ~Someone with little resume-driven experience but good grogging skills
    - pm 9y ago
      No, I wish. The closest you'll get is companies that might hire on transferrable skillsets (e.g., Ruby <-> Python). The best thing you can do is have a portfolio of work that shows your understanding. It's what we had to do when I was doing graphic design and illustration work.
    - solipsism 9y ago
      Big companies understand this and that's reflected in their hiring practices. They don't care what skills you have, just that you're smart. The way they throw you into cold water is using whiteboard interviews. So if you don't like those... sorry.
    - aalleavitch 9y ago
cosmie 9y ago
> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations. I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need). Looking for a new job is a pain. Companies don't explicitly hire for it, politics can come into play if the generalist doesn't know how to dance around the company in a way that doesn't threaten others' fiefdoms, there's no easy way to suss out competence from arrogance during an interview, no manager wants to frontload your salary on their budget when they won't be getting the full benefit of it, and a host of other things. Generalists are valuable to a company, holistically. They're oil to the machine and fit in between all the specialized cogs to smooth things out and let you run the engine hotter without breaking down. But managers only manage their own cogs, hiring only looks for the cogs they're told to find, and at the end of the day whether there's oil in the machine is Someone Else's Problem. Very few teams exist which have the prerogative and budget to hire for that holistic need, so most companies just go without oil and don't think about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- slededit 9y ago
  A lot of comapanies have "A" teams they send in when necessary. The US Digital Service was one example of this.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need)." Your job and experience sound very similar to my current role. I don't have an accurate job title anymore, and I very much see myself as the oil that makes the engine of the company run more smoothly. I wear about four or five different hats, all depending on what fires I need to put out. Good to meet someone doing something similar.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
Companies sometimes aren't honest about their job postings asking too much, and instead blame the worker population on not having the skills they need. The more skills you are trying to get filled for one position, the less likely a candidate will match all of those skills. Take any job posting with 20-30 lines of skills or requirements and it's really no wonder they can't find someone that meets all or even half of that.
- cannonedhamster 9y ago
  Not to mention the companies that specifically write the ads so that they can claim their person doesn't exist and bring in an H1-B holder for half the rate. The fact that these shysters ruined it for the companies that actually need good people at good pay is a major problem.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  I’ve definitely seen postings around asking for 4+ years experience in React or something equally ridiculous (React has existed for 4 years). I think that hiring practices haven’t really caught up to pace of reality yet. Nobody does the same thing for more than 5 years anymore, even if you’ve been at a company that long what you’re doing today does not look like what you were doing then. The chance that a new hire already knows all the parts of your stack is basically zero. What you want is someone who soaks up frameworks like a sponge.
eropple 9y ago
I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track. I need to be an X or a Y or a Z. I can't adopt those roles when necessary--I need to be slotted in and just go. That doesn't really work for me. Which is a major reason why I'm a software consultant now. I'd go do a full-time job that respected my complete disinterest in being pegged to a particular role and was able to give me the latitude to solve cross-cutting problems at scale. But that's a hard role to define, a hard role to hire for, and a hard role to evaluate--which is why they, and other generalist-focused roles, don't often exist. It's easy to get a job. I can walk into almost anywhere in Boston if they're hiring and get an offer; I interview extremely well. I can't get a job that actually leverages my skills.
- inimino 9y ago
  Try consulting or entrepreneurship. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need. When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - eropple 9y ago
    You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do. I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.
    - dmichulke 9y ago
      Same here, I work independently for a few years now and it just becomes less interesting, and for interesting problems where you'd learn something new (I.e. where you are not good but you know you'd get there quickly) you cannot maintain your rate. I keep wondering if I should take the rate cut for a year or just study mathematics at the local university (which is free here) ...
virgilp 9y ago
It's strange, but I think at least some companies find it hard to staff positions, while also at the same time ignoring/rejecting suitable candidates. Case in point - I'm a generalist who can very credibly claim very significant expertise at two disconnected areas (compilers and distributed systems), plus some startup/ product management expertise. I saw a job listing here for a startup that needed both of these and claimed they're looking for remote work - so, even though I'm not actively looking for a job, I wrote them; the match between my skills and their needs seemed too good to be true. They wrote back the standard rejection mail - didn't even try to talk to me. I thought that maybe they found someone else, but no, they still advertise the position. I know it sounds arrogant, but there's no chance in hell they can find many better candidates (I doubt that they can find even one, but well, good luck). Are their recruiters uniquely ignorant? Unlikely. I think many companies do a lousy effort on recruiting, and then wonder why they can't fill the positions. One of the reasons "internal referrals" work so well is that the candidates are at least seriously considered.
- frankydp 9y ago
  I would bet my lunch that your scenario was a keyword mismatch. Always keep in mind that the "hiring person" at startups is usually the non-technical person. So you have to get past the skills list provided by the CTO/CIO/Lead Dev. I have seen three approaches to limit this. First being to stay super field specific but implementation general, but not keyword void. Second, is to go super rabbit hole on every keyword/tool/language/platform you have ever worked with inside the field. The third approach is to have a type one resume with a type two cover letter. That approach has usually been the most consistent for callbacks in my circles, and allows for your rabbit hole to be of the same type as the job description.
  - virgilp 9y ago
    You might be right (though there may be other explanations, e.g. ageism or just wanting local employees, and writing "remote" just for the heck of it, "to get more leads"). But even if you're right, that just reinforces my point: I'm not desperate to get a job; I wrote to have a discussion, because they managed to pique my interest... I didn't put any kind of effort to "market" myself, thought they'll figure things out in the interview(s). They were basically fortunate that their advertising hit he right target. And what did they do with that lead that they got? They throw it away through a non-technical filter....
itronitron 9y ago
Companies find it hard to staff generalist positions because they don't know how to interview/hire generalists. If a generalist interviews with a team that has several specialists then one of specialists can easily knock down the hire decision because the candidate isn't _as_good_as_ the specialist.
marcosdumay 9y ago
Something being hard does not imply it's expensive. There are many ways hiring some kind of people can be hard even with a massive amount of them out of your door looking for a job.

eightysixfour 9y ago

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

JepZ 9y ago
> Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism. Yeah, thats part of the pattern. Generalists often do not appear as professional as specialists (which does not mean that everybody who looks unprofessional is a generalist).
- macawfish 9y ago
  Right. And believe me, I'm not the pinnacle of professionalism, but I have core values of respect and a motivation to do work that people find valuable. Last time I checked they are pretty well intact. I believe this person mistook specialism and accolades for professionalism.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    I think there's a difference of terms. Wanting to work 20-40 hours a month on stuff you like instead of "giving into a job" sounds pretty far from what most people are going to consider "a professional" (you work on what the job needs at the present, with standard hours, that they pay for).
  - mattgreenrocks 9y ago
    This explains why everyone in tech fights over space on the latest bandwagon every time no matter how astoundingly mediocre the latest thing is.
macawfish 9y ago
It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job. I think my hesitancy in this area straight up reeks to the point H.R. people/recruiters can pretty much smell it. It's just not about the money for me. If I was doing something I enjoyed and had time to work on creative projects (a.k.a. "my life's work"), I'd be fine on ~ $1000/mo (say at ~20-40 hrs/mo). But this presents difficult hiring/management challenges, the main one being the challenge of using my time effectively. When someone is always on call, management doesn't have to worry about this as much. Honestly, I think companies could get a lot more bang for their buck if they put more money into hiring people to maintain and improve on open source projects that they use. And I know that there are jobs like this out there. I just need to keep looking for one that fits me :)
- cschep 9y ago
  The idea of failing at "giving in to a job" resonates so much with me. Thanks for taking the time to formulate this thought into words.
- jpm_sd 9y ago
  You think you're too good for a job, hence, you are unemployed.
  - marcus_holmes 9y ago
    you think there is stigma in being unemployed.
  - super-serial 9y ago
    I went through my entire 20s thinking this, and I have strong opinions about it so sorry for this long post... Back when I quit my 9-5 job in 2006 my favorite quote was by the creator of Winamp... "For me, coding is a form of self-expression. The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have. This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leave." No company deserved me because I was a creative innovator, and even though working retail for $10/hr wasn't using my CS degree, I'd rather do that than make $70k getting someone else rich. I thought I deserved $250k since I was obviously going to get them rich - so taking the $10/hr job doing mindless work was less of a sell-out. The next 8 years I tried a lot of things, and went $20k in debt. When I reached my 30s, I realized a few things: 1. You can be a mercenary and get the skills you need for your own business while working for someone else. You learn and get faster while doing tasks for your employer, so even though the code you wrote is owned by them... the code you write for your own business will be better and done faster. 2. If you're worried about getting them rich... just do what they say instead of innovating. Most companies don't innovate, they just maintain the status-quo and have you build systems that meet existing needs and save a little bit of money. You aren't making the next Snapchat at a 9-5... and if you are, you should have equity. 3. Freedom is not just about having the time to do things.... I had all the time in the world in my twenties but no money. Being broke basically put me in a prison. I couldn't go on trips with friends, couldn't take girls out, couldn't do what I wanted because I'd have no money for it. Now that I have a full-time job and work on side projects, I have the opposite problem where I have money but no time. Overall I think having a 9-5 job works better for my lifestyle. Maybe I just needed more discipline and I could have succeeded as an Indie developer making games, marketing software, apps... and whatever other shiny thing caught my eye... but now I do that stuff on the side. I still hope I succeed as an entrepreneur and reach a point where I have complete freedom (time & money)... but now that I'm older I realize that was always a long-shot.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
Another way to see the statements as non-contradictory is: since companies cannot hire people like this, they structure themselves such that such people are not required. Then, when one does happen along, the company has no place for him.
- na85 9y ago
  Or her.

csours 9y ago

There is a massive gulf between hiring and work. There's another massive gulf between what a manager asks for and what HR or recruiters ask for. > "If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions" The process of hiring for this is hard. Finding people like this is also hard.

rhizome 9y ago
I got found by a ~10ppl YC company and the deal fell apart over $12K.
pm 9y ago
There's also gulf a between what companies think they need, and what they actually need. Almost everyone hires on technologies and not the abstract skillsets required to learn said technologies.
- namibj 9y ago
  Any Idea how to find a company that hires on that abstract skillset, potentially by throwing one into cold water to test for it? ~Someone with little resume-driven experience but good grogging skills
  - pm 9y ago
    No, I wish. The closest you'll get is companies that might hire on transferrable skillsets (e.g., Ruby <-> Python). The best thing you can do is have a portfolio of work that shows your understanding. It's what we had to do when I was doing graphic design and illustration work.
  - solipsism 9y ago
    Big companies understand this and that's reflected in their hiring practices. They don't care what skills you have, just that you're smart. The way they throw you into cold water is using whiteboard interviews. So if you don't like those... sorry.
  - aalleavitch 9y ago

cosmie 9y ago

> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations. I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need). Looking for a new job is a pain. Companies don't explicitly hire for it, politics can come into play if the generalist doesn't know how to dance around the company in a way that doesn't threaten others' fiefdoms, there's no easy way to suss out competence from arrogance during an interview, no manager wants to frontload your salary on their budget when they won't be getting the full benefit of it, and a host of other things. Generalists are valuable to a company, holistically. They're oil to the machine and fit in between all the specialized cogs to smooth things out and let you run the engine hotter without breaking down. But managers only manage their own cogs, hiring only looks for the cogs they're told to find, and at the end of the day whether there's oil in the machine is Someone Else's Problem. Very few teams exist which have the prerogative and budget to hire for that holistic need, so most companies just go without oil and don't think about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

slededit 9y ago
A lot of comapanies have "A" teams they send in when necessary. The US Digital Service was one example of this.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need)." Your job and experience sound very similar to my current role. I don't have an accurate job title anymore, and I very much see myself as the oil that makes the engine of the company run more smoothly. I wear about four or five different hats, all depending on what fires I need to put out. Good to meet someone doing something similar.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

Companies sometimes aren't honest about their job postings asking too much, and instead blame the worker population on not having the skills they need. The more skills you are trying to get filled for one position, the less likely a candidate will match all of those skills. Take any job posting with 20-30 lines of skills or requirements and it's really no wonder they can't find someone that meets all or even half of that.

cannonedhamster 9y ago
Not to mention the companies that specifically write the ads so that they can claim their person doesn't exist and bring in an H1-B holder for half the rate. The fact that these shysters ruined it for the companies that actually need good people at good pay is a major problem.
aalleavitch 9y ago
I’ve definitely seen postings around asking for 4+ years experience in React or something equally ridiculous (React has existed for 4 years). I think that hiring practices haven’t really caught up to pace of reality yet. Nobody does the same thing for more than 5 years anymore, even if you’ve been at a company that long what you’re doing today does not look like what you were doing then. The chance that a new hire already knows all the parts of your stack is basically zero. What you want is someone who soaks up frameworks like a sponge.

eropple 9y ago

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track. I need to be an X or a Y or a Z. I can't adopt those roles when necessary--I need to be slotted in and just go. That doesn't really work for me. Which is a major reason why I'm a software consultant now. I'd go do a full-time job that respected my complete disinterest in being pegged to a particular role and was able to give me the latitude to solve cross-cutting problems at scale. But that's a hard role to define, a hard role to hire for, and a hard role to evaluate--which is why they, and other generalist-focused roles, don't often exist. It's easy to get a job. I can walk into almost anywhere in Boston if they're hiring and get an offer; I interview extremely well. I can't get a job that actually leverages my skills.

inimino 9y ago
Try consulting or entrepreneurship. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need. When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- eropple 9y ago
  You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do. I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.
  - dmichulke 9y ago
    Same here, I work independently for a few years now and it just becomes less interesting, and for interesting problems where you'd learn something new (I.e. where you are not good but you know you'd get there quickly) you cannot maintain your rate. I keep wondering if I should take the rate cut for a year or just study mathematics at the local university (which is free here) ...

virgilp 9y ago

It's strange, but I think at least some companies find it hard to staff positions, while also at the same time ignoring/rejecting suitable candidates. Case in point - I'm a generalist who can very credibly claim very significant expertise at two disconnected areas (compilers and distributed systems), plus some startup/ product management expertise. I saw a job listing here for a startup that needed both of these and claimed they're looking for remote work - so, even though I'm not actively looking for a job, I wrote them; the match between my skills and their needs seemed too good to be true. They wrote back the standard rejection mail - didn't even try to talk to me. I thought that maybe they found someone else, but no, they still advertise the position. I know it sounds arrogant, but there's no chance in hell they can find many better candidates (I doubt that they can find even one, but well, good luck). Are their recruiters uniquely ignorant? Unlikely. I think many companies do a lousy effort on recruiting, and then wonder why they can't fill the positions. One of the reasons "internal referrals" work so well is that the candidates are at least seriously considered.

frankydp 9y ago
I would bet my lunch that your scenario was a keyword mismatch. Always keep in mind that the "hiring person" at startups is usually the non-technical person. So you have to get past the skills list provided by the CTO/CIO/Lead Dev. I have seen three approaches to limit this. First being to stay super field specific but implementation general, but not keyword void. Second, is to go super rabbit hole on every keyword/tool/language/platform you have ever worked with inside the field. The third approach is to have a type one resume with a type two cover letter. That approach has usually been the most consistent for callbacks in my circles, and allows for your rabbit hole to be of the same type as the job description.
- virgilp 9y ago
  You might be right (though there may be other explanations, e.g. ageism or just wanting local employees, and writing "remote" just for the heck of it, "to get more leads"). But even if you're right, that just reinforces my point: I'm not desperate to get a job; I wrote to have a discussion, because they managed to pique my interest... I didn't put any kind of effort to "market" myself, thought they'll figure things out in the interview(s). They were basically fortunate that their advertising hit he right target. And what did they do with that lead that they got? They throw it away through a non-technical filter....

itronitron 9y ago

Companies find it hard to staff generalist positions because they don't know how to interview/hire generalists. If a generalist interviews with a team that has several specialists then one of specialists can easily knock down the hire decision because the candidate isn't _as_good_as_ the specialist.

marcosdumay 9y ago

Something being hard does not imply it's expensive. There are many ways hiring some kind of people can be hard even with a massive amount of them out of your door looking for a job.