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> "I think one thing to keep in mind is that this probably highly selects for "jack-of-all-trades" candidates while rejecting candidates that might have more kn

> "I think one thing to keep in mind is that this probably highly selects for "jack-of-all-trades" candidates while rejecting candidates that might have more knowledge / expertise in a particular area, when most likely the job is only going to require specialization in some of those areas." FAANG-class companies do not want one-trick ponies or even few-trick ponies. At least in my experience, they explicitly want to hire not just for the current job but for the long term, which means selecting for highly-capable generalists with the ability to rapidly specialize in any area. And, having spent many years at a FAANG class company, they are right to do so. I worked on embedded systems, physics simulation engines, network services on a gigantic scale, RF related systems, etc. All that stuff one learns in college that many HNers say is useless, well, I found that I wound up using most of of it.

_qulr 6y ago
macOS is at least 20 years old, and Apple needs to maintain it indefinitely. They need engineers who aren't going to accidentally break things for the 100 million strong existing user base. Nobody rapidly specializes in Mac development, there is simply no substitute for experience in this area. The results are pretty obvious and depressing when you see Apple throw engineers at the Mac who don't understand the Mac. Low quality, bugs, constant accidental breakage, bad design in opposition to the platform standards. Not every engineer can work on "the next great thing". You need a lot of engineers to work on the old great thing too. A mixture, a balance of engineers is important. A company gets diminishing returns from having all jack-of-all-trades engineers. Google is the absolute worst at this. They're constantly creating new things... and then discontinuing them a few years later. Their follow through is terrible. Nobody wants to do long-term maintenance. Even though most of Google's revenue comes from the old things, such as search. (My impression that Google search is actually less accurate and useful now than it was 10 years ago.) People love to make sports analogies, so here's mine: imagine a football team that put 11 all-star quarterbacks on the field. They would be the worst football team in the world. Every team needs role players.

_qulr 6y ago

macOS is at least 20 years old, and Apple needs to maintain it indefinitely. They need engineers who aren't going to accidentally break things for the 100 million strong existing user base. Nobody rapidly specializes in Mac development, there is simply no substitute for experience in this area. The results are pretty obvious and depressing when you see Apple throw engineers at the Mac who don't understand the Mac. Low quality, bugs, constant accidental breakage, bad design in opposition to the platform standards. Not every engineer can work on "the next great thing". You need a lot of engineers to work on the old great thing too. A mixture, a balance of engineers is important. A company gets diminishing returns from having all jack-of-all-trades engineers. Google is the absolute worst at this. They're constantly creating new things... and then discontinuing them a few years later. Their follow through is terrible. Nobody wants to do long-term maintenance. Even though most of Google's revenue comes from the old things, such as search. (My impression that Google search is actually less accurate and useful now than it was 10 years ago.) People love to make sports analogies, so here's mine: imagine a football team that put 11 all-star quarterbacks on the field. They would be the worst football team in the world. Every team needs role players.