5 ms·

This advice isn't really universal. It really depends on what type of job you're looking for. If you want to work at a startup, being a specialist ain't going t

This advice isn't really universal. It really depends on what type of job you're looking for. If you want to work at a startup, being a specialist ain't going to get you much attention. What's important is that you've had a broad range of experiences and can adapt quickly in any situation. If you're a founder or early employee at a fast-growing startup, you'll have to make the choice to either remain a generalist (i.e., C-suite), or join the majority of other employees and focus in on something specific. Either way, being a generalist in the beginning of a company's lifecycle can only help you.

Smudge 13y ago
> If you want to work at a startup, being a specialist ain't going to get you much attention. At the same time, few startups I've encountered will hire developers who have never used their technology stack. I recall, during a conference call with one startup, explaining my background in both Ruby and C# only to have one of the co-founders exclaim "you know we use Node and not Rails here, right?" -- I replied that yes, I do. But I've only ever dabbled in Node and you asked about my experience in web development. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in your product and wouldn't be willing to work on my Javascript... They seemed to lose interest after that.