My point is that sometimes you don't have the luxury of having x amount of DB people and x amount of js folks and x amount of server side guys and so on and so

My point is that sometimes you don't have the luxury of having x amount of DB people and x amount of js folks and x amount of server side guys and so on and so forth. I'm coming from a place with very low resources (I'm the only developer at my job right now, we use to have 4). (I wrote this stuff before but for some reason it just didn't go through) As far as testing wise and building things, I believe it is best to have an engineer that is able to fulfill those roles for the following reasons... 1) They understand the structures and what it is that makes an application do what it does. 2) Its a very good learn tool. If you mess up you know exactly why. You'll be able to constantly adapt yourself to become better. 3) Waiting for your "role" to be utilized within an organization may sound great because you have free time, but it causes stagnation and "Diva-ism". That is the whole "Its not my job, so I don't care about your problem" or "You need me more than I need you" attitude. 4) You can move relatively quickly since the code and logic is coming directly from you. Yes, specialists are very important. For large organizations they are very needed. But, to get things to work right now, you need to be flexible and open-minded. Look at Facebook's UI, its not the prettiest (blue bar at the top and 3 columns), yet its an extremely popular product. Most users just want the damn thing to work. I'm no web designer, but I understand that a clean UI is needed. I'm not a DB guy, but I can figure out most problems. Etc. etc. I think that's what Zuck actually wants in his engineers. Guys and gals that can see a problem and fix it on their own. Guys and gals that can think of a cool idea, test it, and have it released for that 1%. Code reviews and peer help will smooth things out. I believe it was Jamie Zawinski's interview in the book "Coders at Work" that had the same mantra when he developed Netscape. Just get the thing out fast. You'll get more eyes on it. And you can always make it better the next time around. It seems like a lot of shops do that. Its a cut throat world and if you spend too much time trying to be super clean and precise, you'll still be on version 1 while your competitor is on version 10.