The "everything person" is a valid position - though your likelihood of landing this sort of unicorn might be questionable. I think GP is arguing against the ex

The "everything person" is a valid position - though your likelihood of landing this sort of unicorn might be questionable. I think GP is arguing against the extremely open ended sort of hiring - the "wow you're crazy good, but we don't have a real need for your niche right now so we'll bounce you around until you get frustrated and leave". At some larger companies also, interviews tend to be "holistic" even when the roles are not. You might be hiring a frontend person but the interview panel will be consisted mostly of backend people. I've unfortunately been through interview cycles (from the employer-side) where this was the case. Worse perhaps are when recruiters deliberately mislead the candidate into coming in. I've seen in the past situations where frontend or backend-centric people come in to interview for the exact opposite position, and are pissed off (rightly so) because they've made their specialization clear to their recruiter contact but was told the position was still relevant to them.