4 ms·

I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse or argumentative. It's not about transitioning between skillsets now, it's about future proofing. I went from

I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse or argumentative. It's not about transitioning between skillsets now, it's about future proofing. I went from doing corporate enterprise applications on Windows NT to embedded systems when the PocketPC came out. Mobile computers didn't exist when I interviewed but because I was a generalist they had confidence that I could pick up the manuals and figure it out. Note - I didn't work for FAANG because F and N didn't exist and A was a bookstore and G was a search engine :)

lapcat 4y ago
> I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse or argumentative. I refer you to the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > because I was a generalist they had confidence that I could pick up the manuals and figure it out Why you though? That's the point I'm making. Of course a smaller company with limited resources may have to repurpose existing employees. But when a BigCo with a massive budget needs to do something new, they can assign existing employees with the closest expertise, hire new employees with relevant expertise, or acquire other companies. It's unclear why a generalist with no domain expertise would be preferable.
- adamauckland 4y ago
  Companies do new stuff all the time which has no domain expertise, the experts are already employed in other places, hiring takes months, they might just be doing a spike to see if it's worth investing in. When GDPR came out, some companies employed experts to deal with it but I expect most companies just gave the job to some unlucky employee.