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As an ex-FAANG who knows dozens of folks at FAANG companies: the vast, vast majority of folks there are generalists, whether they know it or not. The number of

As an ex-FAANG who knows dozens of folks at FAANG companies: the vast, vast majority of folks there are generalists, whether they know it or not. The number of people doing anything remotely "hyper optimized" is extremely small relative to the number of employees. They may work on more specialized problems, but only because the corps are big enough to have entire teams or orgs around things most companies can't even do in-house, but it doesn't make the ICs specialists themselves. To give you an idea, the last offer I got from Google had me choosing between a team developing a proprietary database, a team working on low-level networking problems, and a team responsible for, essentially, refactoring another teams code to make it portable. Specialist teams, mostly generalist individuals.

sebmellen 5y ago
I suppose it’s a semantic difference. In the startup world, being a generalist might mean “Python, Node, Go, some backend frameworks (Express, Django, etc.), HTML/CSS, some frontend frameworks (React, Vue), maybe some experience with cloud and devops, also maybe experience with GraphQL or gRPC, good knowledge of key/value stores and SQL databases, probably high-level knowledge of ancillary technologies like JWT, auth systems, a good understanding of data structures and algorithms, experience in optimizing queries, oh and also a little React Native and maybe Cordova.... <and so on, and so on>” (This is me.) In a FAANG, one might be a generalist in something like “iOS” or “ML” and then develop a deeper subspecialty in that field. To me, this looks like a specialist. But I understand that to someone who works at those organizations (FAANG+), a specialist is someone who developed a new language or exclusively builds compilers or does systems-level programming or something. I suppose these are different vantage points. If you’re specialized enough, everything probably looks “generalist” to some degree.
- darkhorse22 5y ago
  wut
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    The words "generalist" and "specialist" are relative, so different people perceive the roles of "generalists" and "specialists" differently. To me, even a small degree of specialization within software development qualifies someone as a specialist. xyzzy_plugh seems to think many more people are generalists than specialists, even at larger (FAANG) compaines.
    - darkhorse22 5y ago
      you're crazy, I love you, but you're crazy
    - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
      By your definition, I've been a specialist in columnar store databases, high-performance RPC frameworks, compilers and toolchains, embedded firmware and vector graphics. That sounds like a generalist to me.

sebmellen 5y ago

I suppose it’s a semantic difference. In the startup world, being a generalist might mean “Python, Node, Go, some backend frameworks (Express, Django, etc.), HTML/CSS, some frontend frameworks (React, Vue), maybe some experience with cloud and devops, also maybe experience with GraphQL or gRPC, good knowledge of key/value stores and SQL databases, probably high-level knowledge of ancillary technologies like JWT, auth systems, a good understanding of data structures and algorithms, experience in optimizing queries, oh and also a little React Native and maybe Cordova.... <and so on, and so on>” (This is me.) In a FAANG, one might be a generalist in something like “iOS” or “ML” and then develop a deeper subspecialty in that field. To me, this looks like a specialist. But I understand that to someone who works at those organizations (FAANG+), a specialist is someone who developed a new language or exclusively builds compilers or does systems-level programming or something. I suppose these are different vantage points. If you’re specialized enough, everything probably looks “generalist” to some degree.

darkhorse22 5y ago
wut
- sebmellen 5y ago
  The words "generalist" and "specialist" are relative, so different people perceive the roles of "generalists" and "specialists" differently. To me, even a small degree of specialization within software development qualifies someone as a specialist. xyzzy_plugh seems to think many more people are generalists than specialists, even at larger (FAANG) compaines.
  - darkhorse22 5y ago
    you're crazy, I love you, but you're crazy
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    By your definition, I've been a specialist in columnar store databases, high-performance RPC frameworks, compilers and toolchains, embedded firmware and vector graphics. That sounds like a generalist to me.