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Specialising is only possible in larger companies (more than 500 employees). What size have these companies been? A smaller company might want to hire a backend

Specialising is only possible in larger companies (more than 500 employees). What size have these companies been? A smaller company might want to hire a backend expert, but who might have to jump into front-end for short periods - sort of an 80-20 split. Communication during the hiring process can be suboptimal for a lot of reasons: one person does the job posting, another does the interview, a third actually knows what the job entails, but they were never involved in the process. You have to account for that yourself: request a "get-to-know-eachother" with team members and ask them what they do daily. That's the only way to figure out what your own job will be like. If they are set on hiring you and are a good employer in general, they will not have a problem with a request like that.

ghusto 2y ago
> Specialising is only possible in larger companies (more than 500 employees) I've seen this sentiment a few times now, so I'll weight in and say that I have to disagree. I mainly work for companies smaller than 50 devs, and frontenders do front-end, backenders do backend. I've never witnessed the behaviour described. Maybe it's a USA thing?
- hansvm 2y ago
  Small-company USA dev here, this is news to me too.
throwawaybcknd 2y ago
> Specialising is only possible in larger companies (more than 500 employees). I think it depends on the company. You get niches at 10 employees. > A smaller company might want to hire a backend expert, but who might have to jump into front-end for short periods - sort of an 80-20 split. Yeah, like I mentioned, I don't mind that. At one company, I ported our network daemon to Windows XP.
katzinsky 2y ago
My experience is the total opposite. Smaller companies tend to interview you for and assign you to exactly what they tell you you'll be doing. It's the big publicly traded companies with sprawling administration that seem to consistently do the bait and switch thing.

ghusto 2y ago

> Specialising is only possible in larger companies (more than 500 employees) I've seen this sentiment a few times now, so I'll weight in and say that I have to disagree. I mainly work for companies smaller than 50 devs, and frontenders do front-end, backenders do backend. I've never witnessed the behaviour described. Maybe it's a USA thing?

hansvm 2y ago
Small-company USA dev here, this is news to me too.

throwawaybcknd 2y ago

> Specialising is only possible in larger companies (more than 500 employees). I think it depends on the company. You get niches at 10 employees. > A smaller company might want to hire a backend expert, but who might have to jump into front-end for short periods - sort of an 80-20 split. Yeah, like I mentioned, I don't mind that. At one company, I ported our network daemon to Windows XP.

katzinsky 2y ago

My experience is the total opposite. Smaller companies tend to interview you for and assign you to exactly what they tell you you'll be doing. It's the big publicly traded companies with sprawling administration that seem to consistently do the bait and switch thing.