4 ms·

Someone early in my career described “F shaped skills” to me, building on the older T shape [0] you may have heard of before. The idea being that the vertical s

Someone early in my career described “F shaped skills” to me, building on the older T shape [0] you may have heard of before. The idea being that the vertical stem of the F represents the very wide, but (somewhat) shallow, skills you may have. The two horizontal strokes represent multiple areas of very deep understanding and expertise. To me, and I would describe myself as one among other things, a “full stack developer” in the “web developer” sense is someone with F shaped skills in web development. Able to to get by anywhere on the stack, but with deep understanding and expertise in both a particular backend and a front end tool. An F shaped full stack developer is someone you can rely on to work on you whole stack, but with particular emphasis on a key front end and backend area. Many people deride “full stack developers” as “jack of all trades, master of none”. I couldn’t disagree more, full stack developers are the artists of the web, the true creatives, pushing development forward and inventing new things. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills

sph 4y ago
> Many people deride “full stack developers” as “jack of all trades, master of none”. Because they forget the second part: "jack of all trades, master of none, is often-times better than master of one." As someone with a huge passion for learning new things, I find remaining a generalist brings the most value to a company (as a contractor), as you're hired to deal with problem A, but if you can also help with problem B and aren't afraid of learning to fix problem C as well, you're worth your weight in gold. Specialization is for insects, and engineers without ADHD.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Exactly, I quite like the term “multidisciplinary”, which I tend to use myself.
- Rayhem 4y ago
  > Specialization is for insects, and engineers without ADHD. Specialization is not just for insects if you want to do things like go to the moon or formulate a polio vaccine. It is the unfortunate nature of tough problems that they require a very deep, nuanced understanding to solve.
  - sph 4y ago
    Of course, I was being tongue-in-cheek and mostly referring to software engineering. And I didn't mean to disparage insects nor specialists. Both are incredibly important for the world.
- danaris 4y ago
  Yeah, the Heinlein quote is pretty awful anywhere, and definitely not relevant here, given its original context. Even a generalist full-stack developer (which I, too, am) is still specialized to tech work. Heinlein's "real man" is effectively impossible in the modern world, and reeks of a particular kind of "rugged individualist" prejudice.
diarrhea 4y ago
F-shaped skills sound like π-shaped skills.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Yes, it’s seems many people have different names for it, pi, M, comb.

sph 4y ago

> Many people deride “full stack developers” as “jack of all trades, master of none”. Because they forget the second part: "jack of all trades, master of none, is often-times better than master of one." As someone with a huge passion for learning new things, I find remaining a generalist brings the most value to a company (as a contractor), as you're hired to deal with problem A, but if you can also help with problem B and aren't afraid of learning to fix problem C as well, you're worth your weight in gold. Specialization is for insects, and engineers without ADHD.

samwillis 4y ago
Exactly, I quite like the term “multidisciplinary”, which I tend to use myself.
Rayhem 4y ago
> Specialization is for insects, and engineers without ADHD. Specialization is not just for insects if you want to do things like go to the moon or formulate a polio vaccine. It is the unfortunate nature of tough problems that they require a very deep, nuanced understanding to solve.
- sph 4y ago
  Of course, I was being tongue-in-cheek and mostly referring to software engineering. And I didn't mean to disparage insects nor specialists. Both are incredibly important for the world.
danaris 4y ago
Yeah, the Heinlein quote is pretty awful anywhere, and definitely not relevant here, given its original context. Even a generalist full-stack developer (which I, too, am) is still specialized to tech work. Heinlein's "real man" is effectively impossible in the modern world, and reeks of a particular kind of "rugged individualist" prejudice.

diarrhea 4y ago

F-shaped skills sound like π-shaped skills.

samwillis 4y ago
Yes, it’s seems many people have different names for it, pi, M, comb.