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Ask HN: How to find “senior” jack of all trades jobs?

I have been in my current role for about 6 years. While I wasn't hired for it specifically, my average week has my time split between product management, managing a small team to develop those products, ux design, and front-end JS/Python development. It's really a roll where I am all over the place and I do really enjoy it. However, due to the Covid reality in the world right now I am starting to think my time here is up. How can I find another job that isn't specialized to one specific roll as I really do enjoy being a jack of all trades master of none and would like to continue to do that in my next role. I'm also fairly experienced with 16 years of "jack of all trade" type positions.

dagmx 6y ago
If you're ever open to it, games and film have Technical Artist and Technical Director roles which are effectively asking someone to be a jack of all trades within that domain space
quickthrower2 6y ago
I find that most jobs for small companies are unspecialised Jack of all trades. The smaller the dev team, the more you will be pitching in with product design and dev ops etc. I'm not sure how you can filter for such jobs, given that job descriptions are always vague - but maybe for each job description see if you can find out the company and then research if they are a small startup for small business, or a large company with a culture of small teams that do everything for themselves for one product (rather than a team for architecture, a team for python, a front end team etc..)
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- wolco2 6y ago
  Angellist might be a good place to start.
- etothepii 6y ago
  I don't think it's just small companies, it's any team that doesn't have a focus on technology. The power of computers is so vast that a moderately competent technologist can deliver enormous business value if they really get to understand the business problems a non technology team is trying to solve. This could be anything from a legal team auto billing a six minute unit for every email received to using python to combine excel workbooks. This is why we're building https://peerwyse.com https://peerwyse.com. We think finding people with good salaries from your LinkedIn network who you think of as your "skill-set peers" will identify opportunities in their industry that traditional job-title based searches can't reveal.
  - andrewf 6y ago
    +1 to the focus on "team" instead of "company". Inside a large company, the largest and most prestigious initiatives will be well-staffed with specialists, and a bunch of management types to coordinate them. But even if the company has a tech focus, you'll also find teams of network administrators, billing folks, supply chain people etc who are struggling to have their needs met. Typically their story is "we can't get out of our manual processes quickly enough", and they will be worried about a high manual error rate and/or scary headcount projections. These teams don't have a product manager or UX designer because (1) they don't need 40 hours/wk (2) those folks will gravitate towards public-facing products. They don't have a deep bench of backend specialists and frontend specialists. They also struggle to get support from centralized teams, because they're a lower priority or they just don't know how to ask. This creates opportunities to unblock the team by jumping in and helping with data/analytics, deployment, testing... all the stuff you might expect to be "cut a ticket to the team which owns this" in a large company.
lallysingh 6y ago
Startup CTO?
- nendroid 6y ago
  Depends on the stage of the startup. Most CTO's don't do anything except control the overall direction of the company.
- totetsu 6y ago
  Or a smallish private college or school CTO.
- lvturner 6y ago
  This is where I ended up, it's incredibly challenging and it can often leave me feeling like a total imposter. Equally I've learned a great deal and I feel helped create not just great products but a great team. I'm mostly happy, but my real fear now is - what next?
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gedy 6y ago
If you are okay with a single title, I've found that having a mix of skills like this helps in a lot of roles. PMs, UX, tech lead, front end devs, etc. If you stick with SMBs you won't be pigeon holed too much and many places will appreciate the breadth. Big companies, not so much...
neltnerb 6y ago
Yeah, small company where they don't have the head count to specialize heavily yet, but that almost automatically means they also don't have the headcount to have a reasonable HR department so you'll probably have to work harder to find them.
snickell 6y ago
I'm in the same boat, inside any given org I can tangibly feel that "jack of all trades" is in huge demand... and I find myself working long hours due to internal demand for this role inside companies. Like you, in my 20 years doing this type of role (wearing a large variety of different title hats) I've never been HIRED to the role. This feels odd, given playing the role always keeps me in high demand internally to organizations.... so if its something organizations crave internally, why don't they hire for it? When eng/prod/ux "broke up" and became separate job roles in the post-Google and post-MS world, I found it /very/ frustrating, because I'd rather straddle all of these objectives. Additionally, I find many companies fail around these seams, because its hard to pragmatically find the optimal solution in the broad eng/prod/ux tradeoff space when you have the "deep knowledge trees" spread across many heads, with the limited bandwidth that entails. When I started taking senior eng management positions, I naturally thought I would change this, and explicitly hire some "jack of all trades" folks. I was surprised by how hard this is to do, harder even (for me) to evaluate than specialist knowledge, was distinguishing pragmatic and effective "jack of all trades" types from, well, bullshitters. This is funny, because the really effective "jack of all trades" I've observed are in many ways the farthest from BSers possible, they're usually so broadly knowledgable partly because they are so voraciously pragmatic that they end up learning a lot of different things. But from the outside, I wasn't personally successful in confidently distinguishing people in an interview context. The problem is there's a similar appearing archetype to "jack of all trades" the "always reading never doing" person. Conversationally, they can appear similar. And I found (and find myself) that its hard to test jacks-of-all-trades because they often don't keep knowledge at their fingertips, part of their skill is fast learning. But even if they spent serious time using a technology, they still need 4 hrs of work in it to look surface competent again (I think because they're constantly swapping knowledge in and out, vs a deep knowledge person who have practiced the same patterns over and over and over). So my limited experience as a "jack of all trader" was: 1. Yes, companies seem to get a LOT of benefit from really good people with broad skillsets. 2. But I personally don't know how to select the good ones in hiring. I suspect other people have found good ways, I'd be curious to hear about them :-)
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  > But even if they spent serious time using a technology, they still need 4 hrs of work in it to look surface competent again (I think because they're constantly swapping knowledge in and out, vs a deep knowledge person who have practiced the same patterns over and over and over). I've been doing professional software work for 25 years. The last several years I've been working with various JS toolkits (vue/angular, some react) as well as backend stuff (mostly PHP, some Node, some Java, some other stuff), and attendant tooling and whatnot (build systems, testing systems, etc). The last 6 months, I've found myself contracting on different projects swapping between these various stacks, sometimes multiple times per week. I know I look incompetent as a JS developer to some folks who are living in that world 40+ hrs/week for years on end. Couple the various tech stacks with each team's own styles of doing things - which, really, they each seem to think any deviation from 'their' standards is heretical and indicates you're a 'lesser' or 'less experienced' developer - it wears thin after a while.. Trying to 'showcase' that 'jack of all trades' aspect in interviews rarely seems to go well, unless it's not an interview and just a word-of-mouth referral from someone who already 'gets it'.
candiddevmike 6y ago
You should figure out what you like to do the most and pursue jobs/specialization for that. Wearing multiple hats will eventually burn you out, regardless of how much you enjoy it now.
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ineedasername 6y ago
Good solid "jack of all trades" folks, if they want to move up, need to do 1 of 2 things: (there may be others, these are the ones that jump out at me) 1) Specialize in at least one thing. This will make you an expert in one thing, while still being the person everyone goes to for other things as well. This will help advance to senior developer. 2) If you have a good grasp of the logistics of how pieces of a project fit together & the coordination necessary, another clear path to a more senior role is team lead where you do PM & part-time development. If you want to go higher than that, you're looking at high level project or product management. Actual development work will be minimal, but again with a jack of all trades background you will still provide valuable insight & guidance to those performing development work. And you can always look for extra opportunities to get your hands dirty back in to coding here & there.
- snickell 6y ago
  In my experience, both personally and as a mentor to a number of "jack of all trades", (1) is good practical advice for jr generalists. The OP appears to have significant experience already, and it does seem suboptimal to masquerade as a specialist in all job hunts, when that's not the real value you bring to the table. Its leaning on the third clause of the full text of the quote: "jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one"... in other words, become a stronger specialist at one thing than most of the specialists in that area. That's great, and some of us can do it, but we're still not as strong as a specialist of our strength. It means you always interview as if you're a couple weight classes below where you actually are. That's a practical compromise for a person starting out, but like the OP, with enough seniority, and the tremendous value that an experienced generalist provides, it feels bad to lean on that leg in all interview situations!
lxe 6y ago
Founding engineer, employee #2, etc... The bigger the company, the harder this will be.
oWIJRwlirj 6y ago
I'm in the same boat and there aren't many. Startup founder or first-wave employee is the most likely option. I've done that several times. The larger the company, the more cookie-cutter the roles and titles. Another option is to find a cookie-cutter role that fits your interests. For me that means "embedded software engineer", where all of my experience is relevant. I'm definitely all-tech and no-management now though. Yet another option is consulting/contracting/freelancing. You need a good network for that. I haven't done this. Preparing to potentially do it in a few years after I have a larger nest egg.
sam1r 6y ago
Create a novel concept with uber numbers/scale/growth from the ground up. With faster rising valuation times. Plot twist. Make it non-profit.
yobert 6y ago
I've had really good luck going for what is now called DevOps. You end up working with every team, doing all sorts of strange tasks, and building strange glue to make strange systems work together. Any time there is a problem, you're involved in the fix. Almost any computer skill you have will be used at some point, at least in my experience.
- tarr11 6y ago
  Devops typically doesn’t get involved in product management .
- Shared404 6y ago
  Any advice on getting into DevOps?
  - AtomicOrbital 6y ago
    teach yourself linux ... rent a remote linux server ( VPS ) on say ovh.com or any vps hosting provider ... learn how to spin up a server on a cloud provider ( aws, google cloud ) ... pickup containers like docker ... learn TLS cert as well as DNS registrar ... on a DNS registrar get yourself a toy domain name like myname.com ... write a tiny server in golang then bundle it into a docker container which you execute on a remote cloud provider ... define the IP of remote host to link to the DNS of your domain name so you are able to enter into a browser this domain url so your browser now talks to your own server you just deployed ... do this manually then learn programming ( golang and bash ) so you can automate all of above steps
pianoben 6y ago
This has basically been my role for the past decade, minus management. In that time I've worked at tiny startups, hypergrowth unicorns, and the biggest tech comapnies. In no case have I ever been hired as a jack-of-all-trades fixer. In every case I was hired because of my specialty (mobile development), and ended up just "making myself useful". In my experience, job titles, levels, and even team membership are more "guidelines" than rules, and are often trailing indicators of what and how you're actually doing. I wouldn't worry about finding the perfect opening - just find a team you like and a manager who seems to get it.
chadcmulligan 6y ago
Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience, I've found most small places advertise themselves, not through agencies, so you can get a jack of all trades job there. They don't pay as well though, it's the trade off imho, interesting work that keeps you busy, or specialise and become a corporate consultant - lots of money but boring af. Other alternatives: - move into management - found your own company - your jack of all trades skills will then be pressed - you could also start a side project and put your energy into that, hopefully it will develop into your own company. - write a book in something (edit: there's the international consultant route for this to I suppose, become a super specialist in one thing and run around talking about it) - edit: Sales / evangelist etc
- badlucklottery 6y ago
  >Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience Yup. I'd add public sector work to that list (mostly because it's chronically understaffed and heavily siloed so you have to fill in a lot of roles). BigCos tend to like specialization because of consistency/efficiency. They might have a skunkworks where you can be a jack of all trades but it's hard to get hired into those roles.
  - altdatathrow 6y ago
    > I'd add public sector work to that list Unfortunately, working your ass off for $40k and a questionably managed pension doesn't put food on the table.
    - jacktradesthrow 6y ago
      public sector work might pay a little below market, but it's nothing like $40K. this is an extreme exaggeration.
    - atoav 6y ago
      Not every nation on earth underpays their public sector workers.
atdrummond 6y ago
Sounds like the type of person we’re interested in. Mind shooting me an email at alex@gatepay.co?
internet_hugs 6y ago
LaunchNotes is hiring right now and we are looking for folks like yourself. If you’d like to chat, shoot me an email and we can get some time scheduled. tyler@launchnotes.io
dropalltables 6y ago
My $0.02: A). join (or start) a startup. I suspect most would love to have someone like you or B). at a larger organization, join a team that is carved out from the overall org working on a new initiative. Depending on the company, job posts may specifically call out this sort of team.
- antoniuschan99 6y ago
  Angel list and Crunch base are good sites for this
mynegation 6y ago
I am in a similar boat and it is exhausting. It is very hard to manage people effectively and do individual contributor level work at the same time. Many people I know after a short stint in management returned to IC work and that is fine and respectable choice. If you do stay in management, get your priorities straight. You do need to be the jack of many trades but these are probably not the trades you are thinking of. Your first and foremost priority is building the right team. Hiring right people, giving autonomy and sense of purpose to the team members. You want people that are smart but even more importantly you want people that get things done with little or no supervision. Having said that your second most important priority is to get people unstuck. Be it your gravitas in organization, making the right introduction, or sharing a critical piece of knowledge - check in with your team regularly and actively ask if there are stumbling blocks or blockers. Many people are good in asking for help but there are many for whom it is hard. I could go on but the point is that the trades you want to master in management are more like: communication, courage to delegate, empathy, accountability, being able to make decisions on imperfect information and deal with whatever consequences come up, etc. EDIT: if you are leaning more towards individual contributor role, you will probably either find startups more interesting OR - if you looking for seniority - find an organization that has parallel ladders for management and individual contributors. Those companies will have positions that are worded “staff engineer” or “principal engineer” and tend to be on a larger side.
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caymanjim 6y ago
Consider consulting. I like the variety of roles, and changing clients periodically keeps things fresh and exposes me to a lot of technology. I prefer working for a company so I don't have to find my own clients, and get benefits and a steady paycheck. If you can manage your own network, you can potentially earn more, but it's a lot of work finding a steady stream of clients on your own.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  People are finally starting to realize that benefits are orthogonal to the mission of the company and should be replaced with increased base salaries instead. If the company spends $X on processing your $Y benefit for a year, your salary would increase by $X + $Y, and you would just (optionally) sign up into whatever programs are available to you, without much of a UX change.
  - soroboros 6y ago
    I'm no expert, but I have a hard time believing the economics are this simple. Take health insurance: I'd imagine employers are buying plans offering per-employee costs lower than if each employee were paying for their own insurance. Economies of scale, bargaining power (at least when it comes to larger firms), etc. Perhaps at some firms the processing costs really do outweigh the savings, but I would expect this to be the exception rather than the rule. I could be wrong -- maybe someone with experience could shed some light here.
    - dboreham 6y ago
      Not saying you're wrong but the costs to maintain health insurance for employees are significant. You at least need to have a person on staff who understands health insurance in order to negotiate with carriers. The subject is about as complex as a C compiler.
    - muzani 6y ago
      None of the companies I've worked for offered a decent insurance plan. One had it, but it was more for the other 300 minimum wage workers and practically covered nothing other than car accidents. There were companies that offered full, proper health insurance, but I had my own so the value was close to nil, and the salaries were 25% lower than the smaller companies offered. Benefits tend to be mostly flat across employees to make use of economics of scale. I'd love something like a company car, and would happily take a salary cut because they're liabilities and it's a win-win where taxes are involved. But if a company won't offer a car to everyone, it's not going to happen. I got free parking as a benefit once but only used it a quarter of the month because it was cheaper to Uber to work. I know they were paying for the parking every month and I'd rather take the cash, but I wouldn't turn down an extra $30 of savings even though it cost them about $100.
tru3_power 6y ago
If you’re into security look into a Security Engineer role on a product security team. To be good in this role you’ll need all those skills you listed+software security domain knowledge.
hexbinencoded 6y ago
SRE or manager thereof. Consulting.
jacktradesthrow 6y ago
kinda stating the obvious but it's hard to find a jack of all trades role because typically, if you need to hire for three roles, you look for three distinct individuals. if you're looking for the rare individual who transcends categorization, you don't do it through job ads or an HR department. it's hard enough to find a person who can do one role well. so, if you're a jack of all trades, look for a job fulfilling one of your many possible roles, in a place where you will be able to fulfill the others as well. it sounds like that's exactly how you got the job you have.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
In the support area, generalists can be very popular. Lots of people will just bounce issues that sound even slightly outside of their wheelhouse; being the guy who takes on cases and owns them no matter where they go will win you a lot of friends very quickly. I don't have the lofty "Sr" in my title but I have a special designation as the "edge case SME" in the list of experts. I also do big crisis management which is pretty fun. Not a dev, so take it as you will.
noufalibrahim 6y ago
My general experience has been that seniority almost implies specialisation. A good compromise is to be super skilled at one (or a few) tasks and have working knowledge of others. The former makes for a good resume and will get you hired. The latter will help you grow at the organisation you join. https://jtauber.com/journeyman_of_some/ https://jtauber.com/journeyman_of_some/ is a particularly eloquent way of putting it.
zorked 6y ago
The "jack of all trades" in many companies may go by the name "System Engineer". If you are a jack of all trades that wants to be involved in management, the job title to pursue is Technical Program Manager.
filmgirlcw 6y ago
I’m in a senior “jack of all trades” role at a big co. and it wasn’t something I was hired into — though I sold my agility/ability to absorb information and context switch in my interview — but it was something I just sort of naturally created for myself. For the kind of work I do, being a jack of all trades/generalist is actually VERY valuable and I would like to think my team sees that value. But it’s definitely difficult to explain to people who don’t know me who see all my peers who have specific technologies focus areas, and then I’m the chick who knows a lot about a lot of things, has seen a lot, but obviously isn’t going to be as strong as someone who has spent years focusing on one area. I might be off-base here, but I often think of people who are jack of all trades types as ideal connectors. Or, at least I am. I can connect the right people/teams together and can often identify problems/solutions by asking the right kinds of questions that can help a specialist hone in on something. That connector/conduit piece is something incredibly beneficial at a large company, when the product engineering teams, the UX teams, the marketing teams, and the sales teams aren’t always in sync (particularly if something is cross product or cross organization). By being familiar with so many different people/roles and being good at identifying where there are opportunities to work together, that’s been a good fit for me, as I get to work on lots of different things and once and spend time with lots of different teams. That said, I do echo what others have suggested, which is to go for a specialized type of role and then either express your strengths for cross-org work or agility in the interview or try to carve out the role once you’re in the job. A good generalist is typically identified early on and in my experience, we get slotted into that role by others, often without trying. The more difficult thing, I’ve found, is getting promoted. I’m close to making principal and I would have already been promoted if I was focused on one area. That’s frustrating, because obviously I can do that, but doing that offers less value to the company. But I want to get promoted, so I’m working out how to play that game, while also still being a jack of all trades, even if my title is more focused/specific.
mindhash 6y ago
I have been on similar boat. I realized my skillet is desirable to founders who ain't able to expand product lines or build new products. So I work mainly on contracts and get my leads through network or through linked in. The first thing if you want to do this is to start writing blogs that showcase your experience. I also avoid working with really early stage founders as my rates are high. Write content that will attract founders. Good luck
tornadron 6y ago
If you are strong at product/program management, there are more technical versions of those positions at larger techs where being able to code, do some UX design, proof of concept work would be useful (i know people in those types of roles at Apple, Microsoft for example). Or a "Solution Engineer" at an enterprise software/services company could be a fit. This is a role where you may not be working on the core platform, but custom solutions for clients built on top of the platform (hence PM, UX type skills are useful). Sometimes this is in service of sales pitches, other times you are actually implementing the solution. I have hired for roles like this in enterprise world, but also even for internal platforms at a FANG, i've setup something similar before. I myself am a sort of jack of all trades for ~20 years now and am a senior engineering manager at a FANG--I've never considered myself to be a particularly strong engineer, but I made up for it in other ways and am technical "enough" to be effective (at least people seem to think so). I've seen others like me be successful (e.g. they are more senior than me now), and some did not even have technical backgrounds, they just "faked it till they made it", but had a good sense of what was important to focus on and not be distracted by technical ratholes. Like others said, a startup is a good option too--I have been in that type of role in several startups earlier in my career (and have had to hire those types of people before). good luck!
gravypod 6y ago
Post your email here and wait for people to reach out to you. I'd send you something tomorrow for a position at the company I'm working for right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
codezero 6y ago
Coming from a generalist who's been at their startup for six years, has roughly 20 years of generalist experience, and is entering a new growth phase: pick a focus for now, get really good at it and leverage that. Your generalist skills won't go away, and your focus will be rewarded. Also find a really good, experienced manager/leader who can help coach you into that phase. I've found it's very hard for generalists to self-motivate when focusing on a specific and narrow development, and a good coach helps. If you want to stay a generalist, that's great, go join small startups and bring your experience to them, help them grow and then move on to the next. Early stage startups crave experienced generalists and you can ride that for a long time.
jamil7 6y ago
I have a similar skillset to you and have worked on nearly everything at some point in small companies and startups. I love being a generalist and designing whole systems or other times working on one small part. I ended up freelancing and couldn’t be happier, if you can ease into getting some steady clients it might also work for you.
banuguler 6y ago
If you want to be at a funded startup, try to backchannel rather than finding a public posting. Find a larger company you think is interesting, then figure out who invested in them in the early days. Find early founders/employees who've since moved on. Find out what those people are investing in or working on now.
tohs19 6y ago
In my opinion, that’s a CEO, COO, CCO, or business advisor/development/consultant. Likely to look a multinational corporations or groups dabbling in many things. Everyone naturally will be wearing many “hats” and they will look out for that.
didgeoridoo 6y ago
Look for the term “creative technologist”. It’s a relatively rare role, but seems to match what you’re looking for.
dangoljames 6y ago
s/roll/role
adambware 6y ago
I’ve got slightly less experience and just moved to Product Management because it seemed like a blend of all of my flavors of knowledge. The PM Role is also helping me gain more knowledge to one day run my own company. If you’re looking to be more hands-on with the engineering, I’d recommend management. Engineering Manager seems like the best fit given your description.
bussetta 6y ago
If you do want to work for a big Corp, ladders like Solutions Engineer will be a good fit.
sngz 6y ago
getting past interviews that focus on very specific things is going to be the hard part. Every one wants a jack of all trades but they really want a master of everything for the salary of 1 person.
stephenboyd 6y ago
The keyword you're looking for is "cross-functional", which is used to describe teams where everyone is expected to be a jack of all trades. I'm on a team like that and my responsibilities range from system architecture, UX design, programming at all levels, infrastructure, etc. It's been great for me since I enjoy the variety and my team can generally cover anything for me when I want to take time off. Just Google for "cross-functional senior software engineer" and you'll see a lot of listings that fit what you're looking for, including the high-paying FAANG companies.
scott31 6y ago
You did not have to put senior in quotes, we all know it was sarcastic as "jack of all trade" means 0.1Xer with no expertise on any subject
kirillzubovsky 6y ago
This isn't going to answer your question directly, but as a generalist myself this just hit me, and I think it's valuable. In my experience, many "experts" in specific programming areas have either gathered sufficient prior knowledge to know the right answer, or more likely have enough prior experience to know where and how to quickly find that answer. That's what makes them the experts. In much the same way, generalists are quick learners, and your expertise is in knowing how to quickly learn anything so you could find the answers. You are quite literally the expert in becoming the expert. You might start at 0% knowledge, but you can also get to 80% relatively quickly, at which point you too can function on a near-expert level, at least for a while in a narrow enough scope. Understanding that, if true, will help you find the jobs that need this ability, even if they don't know it yet. ps. Let us know how it goes. Would love to learn what you learn ;)

dagmx 6y ago

If you're ever open to it, games and film have Technical Artist and Technical Director roles which are effectively asking someone to be a jack of all trades within that domain space

quickthrower2 6y ago

I find that most jobs for small companies are unspecialised Jack of all trades. The smaller the dev team, the more you will be pitching in with product design and dev ops etc. I'm not sure how you can filter for such jobs, given that job descriptions are always vague - but maybe for each job description see if you can find out the company and then research if they are a small startup for small business, or a large company with a culture of small teams that do everything for themselves for one product (rather than a team for architecture, a team for python, a front end team etc..)

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wolco2 6y ago
Angellist might be a good place to start.
etothepii 6y ago
I don't think it's just small companies, it's any team that doesn't have a focus on technology. The power of computers is so vast that a moderately competent technologist can deliver enormous business value if they really get to understand the business problems a non technology team is trying to solve. This could be anything from a legal team auto billing a six minute unit for every email received to using python to combine excel workbooks. This is why we're building https://peerwyse.com https://peerwyse.com. We think finding people with good salaries from your LinkedIn network who you think of as your "skill-set peers" will identify opportunities in their industry that traditional job-title based searches can't reveal.
- andrewf 6y ago
  +1 to the focus on "team" instead of "company". Inside a large company, the largest and most prestigious initiatives will be well-staffed with specialists, and a bunch of management types to coordinate them. But even if the company has a tech focus, you'll also find teams of network administrators, billing folks, supply chain people etc who are struggling to have their needs met. Typically their story is "we can't get out of our manual processes quickly enough", and they will be worried about a high manual error rate and/or scary headcount projections. These teams don't have a product manager or UX designer because (1) they don't need 40 hours/wk (2) those folks will gravitate towards public-facing products. They don't have a deep bench of backend specialists and frontend specialists. They also struggle to get support from centralized teams, because they're a lower priority or they just don't know how to ask. This creates opportunities to unblock the team by jumping in and helping with data/analytics, deployment, testing... all the stuff you might expect to be "cut a ticket to the team which owns this" in a large company.

lallysingh 6y ago

Startup CTO?

nendroid 6y ago
Depends on the stage of the startup. Most CTO's don't do anything except control the overall direction of the company.
totetsu 6y ago
Or a smallish private college or school CTO.
lvturner 6y ago
This is where I ended up, it's incredibly challenging and it can often leave me feeling like a total imposter. Equally I've learned a great deal and I feel helped create not just great products but a great team. I'm mostly happy, but my real fear now is - what next?

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gedy 6y ago

If you are okay with a single title, I've found that having a mix of skills like this helps in a lot of roles. PMs, UX, tech lead, front end devs, etc. If you stick with SMBs you won't be pigeon holed too much and many places will appreciate the breadth. Big companies, not so much...

neltnerb 6y ago

Yeah, small company where they don't have the head count to specialize heavily yet, but that almost automatically means they also don't have the headcount to have a reasonable HR department so you'll probably have to work harder to find them.

snickell 6y ago

I'm in the same boat, inside any given org I can tangibly feel that "jack of all trades" is in huge demand... and I find myself working long hours due to internal demand for this role inside companies. Like you, in my 20 years doing this type of role (wearing a large variety of different title hats) I've never been HIRED to the role. This feels odd, given playing the role always keeps me in high demand internally to organizations.... so if its something organizations crave internally, why don't they hire for it? When eng/prod/ux "broke up" and became separate job roles in the post-Google and post-MS world, I found it /very/ frustrating, because I'd rather straddle all of these objectives. Additionally, I find many companies fail around these seams, because its hard to pragmatically find the optimal solution in the broad eng/prod/ux tradeoff space when you have the "deep knowledge trees" spread across many heads, with the limited bandwidth that entails. When I started taking senior eng management positions, I naturally thought I would change this, and explicitly hire some "jack of all trades" folks. I was surprised by how hard this is to do, harder even (for me) to evaluate than specialist knowledge, was distinguishing pragmatic and effective "jack of all trades" types from, well, bullshitters. This is funny, because the really effective "jack of all trades" I've observed are in many ways the farthest from BSers possible, they're usually so broadly knowledgable partly because they are so voraciously pragmatic that they end up learning a lot of different things. But from the outside, I wasn't personally successful in confidently distinguishing people in an interview context. The problem is there's a similar appearing archetype to "jack of all trades" the "always reading never doing" person. Conversationally, they can appear similar. And I found (and find myself) that its hard to test jacks-of-all-trades because they often don't keep knowledge at their fingertips, part of their skill is fast learning. But even if they spent serious time using a technology, they still need 4 hrs of work in it to look surface competent again (I think because they're constantly swapping knowledge in and out, vs a deep knowledge person who have practiced the same patterns over and over and over). So my limited experience as a "jack of all trader" was: 1. Yes, companies seem to get a LOT of benefit from really good people with broad skillsets. 2. But I personally don't know how to select the good ones in hiring. I suspect other people have found good ways, I'd be curious to hear about them :-)

mgkimsal 6y ago
> But even if they spent serious time using a technology, they still need 4 hrs of work in it to look surface competent again (I think because they're constantly swapping knowledge in and out, vs a deep knowledge person who have practiced the same patterns over and over and over). I've been doing professional software work for 25 years. The last several years I've been working with various JS toolkits (vue/angular, some react) as well as backend stuff (mostly PHP, some Node, some Java, some other stuff), and attendant tooling and whatnot (build systems, testing systems, etc). The last 6 months, I've found myself contracting on different projects swapping between these various stacks, sometimes multiple times per week. I know I look incompetent as a JS developer to some folks who are living in that world 40+ hrs/week for years on end. Couple the various tech stacks with each team's own styles of doing things - which, really, they each seem to think any deviation from 'their' standards is heretical and indicates you're a 'lesser' or 'less experienced' developer - it wears thin after a while.. Trying to 'showcase' that 'jack of all trades' aspect in interviews rarely seems to go well, unless it's not an interview and just a word-of-mouth referral from someone who already 'gets it'.

candiddevmike 6y ago

You should figure out what you like to do the most and pursue jobs/specialization for that. Wearing multiple hats will eventually burn you out, regardless of how much you enjoy it now.

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ineedasername 6y ago

Good solid "jack of all trades" folks, if they want to move up, need to do 1 of 2 things: (there may be others, these are the ones that jump out at me) 1) Specialize in at least one thing. This will make you an expert in one thing, while still being the person everyone goes to for other things as well. This will help advance to senior developer. 2) If you have a good grasp of the logistics of how pieces of a project fit together & the coordination necessary, another clear path to a more senior role is team lead where you do PM & part-time development. If you want to go higher than that, you're looking at high level project or product management. Actual development work will be minimal, but again with a jack of all trades background you will still provide valuable insight & guidance to those performing development work. And you can always look for extra opportunities to get your hands dirty back in to coding here & there.

snickell 6y ago
In my experience, both personally and as a mentor to a number of "jack of all trades", (1) is good practical advice for jr generalists. The OP appears to have significant experience already, and it does seem suboptimal to masquerade as a specialist in all job hunts, when that's not the real value you bring to the table. Its leaning on the third clause of the full text of the quote: "jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one"... in other words, become a stronger specialist at one thing than most of the specialists in that area. That's great, and some of us can do it, but we're still not as strong as a specialist of our strength. It means you always interview as if you're a couple weight classes below where you actually are. That's a practical compromise for a person starting out, but like the OP, with enough seniority, and the tremendous value that an experienced generalist provides, it feels bad to lean on that leg in all interview situations!

lxe 6y ago

Founding engineer, employee #2, etc... The bigger the company, the harder this will be.

oWIJRwlirj 6y ago

I'm in the same boat and there aren't many. Startup founder or first-wave employee is the most likely option. I've done that several times. The larger the company, the more cookie-cutter the roles and titles. Another option is to find a cookie-cutter role that fits your interests. For me that means "embedded software engineer", where all of my experience is relevant. I'm definitely all-tech and no-management now though. Yet another option is consulting/contracting/freelancing. You need a good network for that. I haven't done this. Preparing to potentially do it in a few years after I have a larger nest egg.

sam1r 6y ago

Create a novel concept with uber numbers/scale/growth from the ground up. With faster rising valuation times. Plot twist. Make it non-profit.

yobert 6y ago

I've had really good luck going for what is now called DevOps. You end up working with every team, doing all sorts of strange tasks, and building strange glue to make strange systems work together. Any time there is a problem, you're involved in the fix. Almost any computer skill you have will be used at some point, at least in my experience.

tarr11 6y ago
Devops typically doesn’t get involved in product management .
Shared404 6y ago
Any advice on getting into DevOps?
- AtomicOrbital 6y ago
  teach yourself linux ... rent a remote linux server ( VPS ) on say ovh.com or any vps hosting provider ... learn how to spin up a server on a cloud provider ( aws, google cloud ) ... pickup containers like docker ... learn TLS cert as well as DNS registrar ... on a DNS registrar get yourself a toy domain name like myname.com ... write a tiny server in golang then bundle it into a docker container which you execute on a remote cloud provider ... define the IP of remote host to link to the DNS of your domain name so you are able to enter into a browser this domain url so your browser now talks to your own server you just deployed ... do this manually then learn programming ( golang and bash ) so you can automate all of above steps

pianoben 6y ago

This has basically been my role for the past decade, minus management. In that time I've worked at tiny startups, hypergrowth unicorns, and the biggest tech comapnies. In no case have I ever been hired as a jack-of-all-trades fixer. In every case I was hired because of my specialty (mobile development), and ended up just "making myself useful". In my experience, job titles, levels, and even team membership are more "guidelines" than rules, and are often trailing indicators of what and how you're actually doing. I wouldn't worry about finding the perfect opening - just find a team you like and a manager who seems to get it.

chadcmulligan 6y ago

Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience, I've found most small places advertise themselves, not through agencies, so you can get a jack of all trades job there. They don't pay as well though, it's the trade off imho, interesting work that keeps you busy, or specialise and become a corporate consultant - lots of money but boring af. Other alternatives: - move into management - found your own company - your jack of all trades skills will then be pressed - you could also start a side project and put your energy into that, hopefully it will develop into your own company. - write a book in something (edit: there's the international consultant route for this to I suppose, become a super specialist in one thing and run around talking about it) - edit: Sales / evangelist etc

badlucklottery 6y ago
>Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience Yup. I'd add public sector work to that list (mostly because it's chronically understaffed and heavily siloed so you have to fill in a lot of roles). BigCos tend to like specialization because of consistency/efficiency. They might have a skunkworks where you can be a jack of all trades but it's hard to get hired into those roles.
- altdatathrow 6y ago
  > I'd add public sector work to that list Unfortunately, working your ass off for $40k and a questionably managed pension doesn't put food on the table.
  - jacktradesthrow 6y ago
    public sector work might pay a little below market, but it's nothing like $40K. this is an extreme exaggeration.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Not every nation on earth underpays their public sector workers.

atdrummond 6y ago

Sounds like the type of person we’re interested in. Mind shooting me an email at alex@gatepay.co?

internet_hugs 6y ago

LaunchNotes is hiring right now and we are looking for folks like yourself. If you’d like to chat, shoot me an email and we can get some time scheduled. tyler@launchnotes.io

dropalltables 6y ago

My $0.02: A). join (or start) a startup. I suspect most would love to have someone like you or B). at a larger organization, join a team that is carved out from the overall org working on a new initiative. Depending on the company, job posts may specifically call out this sort of team.

antoniuschan99 6y ago
Angel list and Crunch base are good sites for this

mynegation 6y ago

I am in a similar boat and it is exhausting. It is very hard to manage people effectively and do individual contributor level work at the same time. Many people I know after a short stint in management returned to IC work and that is fine and respectable choice. If you do stay in management, get your priorities straight. You do need to be the jack of many trades but these are probably not the trades you are thinking of. Your first and foremost priority is building the right team. Hiring right people, giving autonomy and sense of purpose to the team members. You want people that are smart but even more importantly you want people that get things done with little or no supervision. Having said that your second most important priority is to get people unstuck. Be it your gravitas in organization, making the right introduction, or sharing a critical piece of knowledge - check in with your team regularly and actively ask if there are stumbling blocks or blockers. Many people are good in asking for help but there are many for whom it is hard. I could go on but the point is that the trades you want to master in management are more like: communication, courage to delegate, empathy, accountability, being able to make decisions on imperfect information and deal with whatever consequences come up, etc. EDIT: if you are leaning more towards individual contributor role, you will probably either find startups more interesting OR - if you looking for seniority - find an organization that has parallel ladders for management and individual contributors. Those companies will have positions that are worded “staff engineer” or “principal engineer” and tend to be on a larger side.

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caymanjim 6y ago

Consider consulting. I like the variety of roles, and changing clients periodically keeps things fresh and exposes me to a lot of technology. I prefer working for a company so I don't have to find my own clients, and get benefits and a steady paycheck. If you can manage your own network, you can potentially earn more, but it's a lot of work finding a steady stream of clients on your own.

anonytrary 6y ago
People are finally starting to realize that benefits are orthogonal to the mission of the company and should be replaced with increased base salaries instead. If the company spends $X on processing your $Y benefit for a year, your salary would increase by $X + $Y, and you would just (optionally) sign up into whatever programs are available to you, without much of a UX change.
- soroboros 6y ago
  I'm no expert, but I have a hard time believing the economics are this simple. Take health insurance: I'd imagine employers are buying plans offering per-employee costs lower than if each employee were paying for their own insurance. Economies of scale, bargaining power (at least when it comes to larger firms), etc. Perhaps at some firms the processing costs really do outweigh the savings, but I would expect this to be the exception rather than the rule. I could be wrong -- maybe someone with experience could shed some light here.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Not saying you're wrong but the costs to maintain health insurance for employees are significant. You at least need to have a person on staff who understands health insurance in order to negotiate with carriers. The subject is about as complex as a C compiler.
  - muzani 6y ago
    None of the companies I've worked for offered a decent insurance plan. One had it, but it was more for the other 300 minimum wage workers and practically covered nothing other than car accidents. There were companies that offered full, proper health insurance, but I had my own so the value was close to nil, and the salaries were 25% lower than the smaller companies offered. Benefits tend to be mostly flat across employees to make use of economics of scale. I'd love something like a company car, and would happily take a salary cut because they're liabilities and it's a win-win where taxes are involved. But if a company won't offer a car to everyone, it's not going to happen. I got free parking as a benefit once but only used it a quarter of the month because it was cheaper to Uber to work. I know they were paying for the parking every month and I'd rather take the cash, but I wouldn't turn down an extra $30 of savings even though it cost them about $100.

tru3_power 6y ago

If you’re into security look into a Security Engineer role on a product security team. To be good in this role you’ll need all those skills you listed+software security domain knowledge.

hexbinencoded 6y ago

SRE or manager thereof. Consulting.

jacktradesthrow 6y ago

kinda stating the obvious but it's hard to find a jack of all trades role because typically, if you need to hire for three roles, you look for three distinct individuals. if you're looking for the rare individual who transcends categorization, you don't do it through job ads or an HR department. it's hard enough to find a person who can do one role well. so, if you're a jack of all trades, look for a job fulfilling one of your many possible roles, in a place where you will be able to fulfill the others as well. it sounds like that's exactly how you got the job you have.

jabroni_salad 6y ago

In the support area, generalists can be very popular. Lots of people will just bounce issues that sound even slightly outside of their wheelhouse; being the guy who takes on cases and owns them no matter where they go will win you a lot of friends very quickly. I don't have the lofty "Sr" in my title but I have a special designation as the "edge case SME" in the list of experts. I also do big crisis management which is pretty fun. Not a dev, so take it as you will.

noufalibrahim 6y ago

My general experience has been that seniority almost implies specialisation. A good compromise is to be super skilled at one (or a few) tasks and have working knowledge of others. The former makes for a good resume and will get you hired. The latter will help you grow at the organisation you join. https://jtauber.com/journeyman_of_some/ https://jtauber.com/journeyman_of_some/ is a particularly eloquent way of putting it.

zorked 6y ago

The "jack of all trades" in many companies may go by the name "System Engineer". If you are a jack of all trades that wants to be involved in management, the job title to pursue is Technical Program Manager.

filmgirlcw 6y ago

I’m in a senior “jack of all trades” role at a big co. and it wasn’t something I was hired into — though I sold my agility/ability to absorb information and context switch in my interview — but it was something I just sort of naturally created for myself. For the kind of work I do, being a jack of all trades/generalist is actually VERY valuable and I would like to think my team sees that value. But it’s definitely difficult to explain to people who don’t know me who see all my peers who have specific technologies focus areas, and then I’m the chick who knows a lot about a lot of things, has seen a lot, but obviously isn’t going to be as strong as someone who has spent years focusing on one area. I might be off-base here, but I often think of people who are jack of all trades types as ideal connectors. Or, at least I am. I can connect the right people/teams together and can often identify problems/solutions by asking the right kinds of questions that can help a specialist hone in on something. That connector/conduit piece is something incredibly beneficial at a large company, when the product engineering teams, the UX teams, the marketing teams, and the sales teams aren’t always in sync (particularly if something is cross product or cross organization). By being familiar with so many different people/roles and being good at identifying where there are opportunities to work together, that’s been a good fit for me, as I get to work on lots of different things and once and spend time with lots of different teams. That said, I do echo what others have suggested, which is to go for a specialized type of role and then either express your strengths for cross-org work or agility in the interview or try to carve out the role once you’re in the job. A good generalist is typically identified early on and in my experience, we get slotted into that role by others, often without trying. The more difficult thing, I’ve found, is getting promoted. I’m close to making principal and I would have already been promoted if I was focused on one area. That’s frustrating, because obviously I can do that, but doing that offers less value to the company. But I want to get promoted, so I’m working out how to play that game, while also still being a jack of all trades, even if my title is more focused/specific.

mindhash 6y ago

I have been on similar boat. I realized my skillet is desirable to founders who ain't able to expand product lines or build new products. So I work mainly on contracts and get my leads through network or through linked in. The first thing if you want to do this is to start writing blogs that showcase your experience. I also avoid working with really early stage founders as my rates are high. Write content that will attract founders. Good luck

tornadron 6y ago

If you are strong at product/program management, there are more technical versions of those positions at larger techs where being able to code, do some UX design, proof of concept work would be useful (i know people in those types of roles at Apple, Microsoft for example). Or a "Solution Engineer" at an enterprise software/services company could be a fit. This is a role where you may not be working on the core platform, but custom solutions for clients built on top of the platform (hence PM, UX type skills are useful). Sometimes this is in service of sales pitches, other times you are actually implementing the solution. I have hired for roles like this in enterprise world, but also even for internal platforms at a FANG, i've setup something similar before. I myself am a sort of jack of all trades for ~20 years now and am a senior engineering manager at a FANG--I've never considered myself to be a particularly strong engineer, but I made up for it in other ways and am technical "enough" to be effective (at least people seem to think so). I've seen others like me be successful (e.g. they are more senior than me now), and some did not even have technical backgrounds, they just "faked it till they made it", but had a good sense of what was important to focus on and not be distracted by technical ratholes. Like others said, a startup is a good option too--I have been in that type of role in several startups earlier in my career (and have had to hire those types of people before). good luck!

gravypod 6y ago

Post your email here and wait for people to reach out to you. I'd send you something tomorrow for a position at the company I'm working for right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

codezero 6y ago

Coming from a generalist who's been at their startup for six years, has roughly 20 years of generalist experience, and is entering a new growth phase: pick a focus for now, get really good at it and leverage that. Your generalist skills won't go away, and your focus will be rewarded. Also find a really good, experienced manager/leader who can help coach you into that phase. I've found it's very hard for generalists to self-motivate when focusing on a specific and narrow development, and a good coach helps. If you want to stay a generalist, that's great, go join small startups and bring your experience to them, help them grow and then move on to the next. Early stage startups crave experienced generalists and you can ride that for a long time.

jamil7 6y ago

I have a similar skillset to you and have worked on nearly everything at some point in small companies and startups. I love being a generalist and designing whole systems or other times working on one small part. I ended up freelancing and couldn’t be happier, if you can ease into getting some steady clients it might also work for you.

banuguler 6y ago

If you want to be at a funded startup, try to backchannel rather than finding a public posting. Find a larger company you think is interesting, then figure out who invested in them in the early days. Find early founders/employees who've since moved on. Find out what those people are investing in or working on now.

tohs19 6y ago

In my opinion, that’s a CEO, COO, CCO, or business advisor/development/consultant. Likely to look a multinational corporations or groups dabbling in many things. Everyone naturally will be wearing many “hats” and they will look out for that.

didgeoridoo 6y ago

Look for the term “creative technologist”. It’s a relatively rare role, but seems to match what you’re looking for.

dangoljames 6y ago

s/roll/role

adambware 6y ago

I’ve got slightly less experience and just moved to Product Management because it seemed like a blend of all of my flavors of knowledge. The PM Role is also helping me gain more knowledge to one day run my own company. If you’re looking to be more hands-on with the engineering, I’d recommend management. Engineering Manager seems like the best fit given your description.

bussetta 6y ago

If you do want to work for a big Corp, ladders like Solutions Engineer will be a good fit.

sngz 6y ago

getting past interviews that focus on very specific things is going to be the hard part. Every one wants a jack of all trades but they really want a master of everything for the salary of 1 person.

stephenboyd 6y ago

The keyword you're looking for is "cross-functional", which is used to describe teams where everyone is expected to be a jack of all trades. I'm on a team like that and my responsibilities range from system architecture, UX design, programming at all levels, infrastructure, etc. It's been great for me since I enjoy the variety and my team can generally cover anything for me when I want to take time off. Just Google for "cross-functional senior software engineer" and you'll see a lot of listings that fit what you're looking for, including the high-paying FAANG companies.

scott31 6y ago

You did not have to put senior in quotes, we all know it was sarcastic as "jack of all trade" means 0.1Xer with no expertise on any subject

kirillzubovsky 6y ago

This isn't going to answer your question directly, but as a generalist myself this just hit me, and I think it's valuable. In my experience, many "experts" in specific programming areas have either gathered sufficient prior knowledge to know the right answer, or more likely have enough prior experience to know where and how to quickly find that answer. That's what makes them the experts. In much the same way, generalists are quick learners, and your expertise is in knowing how to quickly learn anything so you could find the answers. You are quite literally the expert in becoming the expert. You might start at 0% knowledge, but you can also get to 80% relatively quickly, at which point you too can function on a near-expert level, at least for a while in a narrow enough scope. Understanding that, if true, will help you find the jobs that need this ability, even if they don't know it yet. ps. Let us know how it goes. Would love to learn what you learn ;)