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> People that call themselves "full stack"are a backend developer that dabbles in frontend or a front end developer that can dabble on the backend. Almost never

> People that call themselves "full stack"are a backend developer that dabbles in frontend or a front end developer that can dabble on the backend. Almost never have a met a person who was equally good at both. So what? Both of these developers would be able to ship a typical feature in a typical web product by themselves, without back-and-forth with their counterpart all the time, and that's a huge productivity boost. May be at some point help from a subject area expert would be needed — set up proper db indexes, center that div properly on a small viewport. But being able to iterate without the need to communicate, debug miscommunications, or wait on another person’s availability is a massive efficiency gain. Most product work doesn’t require deep specialization—just someone who can get things working end to end, refine as needed, and know when to pull in an expert. The alternative is siloed devs constantly handing off half-finished work, where backend waits on frontend for an API contract, frontend waits on backend for an endpoint, and everyone waits on QA. Been there, done that. A competent “full stack” dev sidesteps that bottleneck and ships.

hansonkd 2y ago
> So what? Both of these developers would be able to ship a typical feature in a typical web product by themselves, without back-and-forth with their counterpart all the time, and that's a huge productivity boost. Its a short term productivity boost sacrificing for long term maintainability and future productivity. I would take 1 backend engineer + 1 frontend engineer over 3-4 "fullstack engineers" any day of the week.
- leetrout 2y ago
  What is the sacrifice, specifically?
  - hansonkd 2y ago
    Same reason you hire an architect, electricians, carpenters and plumbers to build a house instead of getting an equal number of handymen and telling them to get at it. Thats not to say a layperson can't build a house, but having experience and training about a specific domain can make later modifications and updates significantly easier.
    - xlii 2y ago
      I find this comparison overly simplistic. You don’t get back to architect when you’re doing plumbing. You don’t get back to plumbing when doing electricity. And not only those are often highly isolated tasks but those domain have specialist in it as well. You might go to electrician who can do high voltage installations and you don’t care because he can to general wiring too (thus being full stack). But there’s different about sacrifice that’s bigger issue. In software engineering handoff costs can be absurdly high. Teams can be allocated and if backend team misses on deliver the next window of opportunity can be in couple weeks. In micro, highly agile teams it’s yeah whatever, but I’ve yet to see a dedicated team of frontend/backend that’s on standby for the other party.

hansonkd 2y ago

> So what? Both of these developers would be able to ship a typical feature in a typical web product by themselves, without back-and-forth with their counterpart all the time, and that's a huge productivity boost. Its a short term productivity boost sacrificing for long term maintainability and future productivity. I would take 1 backend engineer + 1 frontend engineer over 3-4 "fullstack engineers" any day of the week.

leetrout 2y ago
What is the sacrifice, specifically?
- hansonkd 2y ago
  Same reason you hire an architect, electricians, carpenters and plumbers to build a house instead of getting an equal number of handymen and telling them to get at it. Thats not to say a layperson can't build a house, but having experience and training about a specific domain can make later modifications and updates significantly easier.
  - xlii 2y ago
    I find this comparison overly simplistic. You don’t get back to architect when you’re doing plumbing. You don’t get back to plumbing when doing electricity. And not only those are often highly isolated tasks but those domain have specialist in it as well. You might go to electrician who can do high voltage installations and you don’t care because he can to general wiring too (thus being full stack). But there’s different about sacrifice that’s bigger issue. In software engineering handoff costs can be absurdly high. Teams can be allocated and if backend team misses on deliver the next window of opportunity can be in couple weeks. In micro, highly agile teams it’s yeah whatever, but I’ve yet to see a dedicated team of frontend/backend that’s on standby for the other party.