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Nick Taylor
Nick Taylor Subscriber

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at iamdeveloper.com

Some-Stack Engineer

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

Anybody down for starting the some-stack engineer movement?

In all seriousness, no one can really be full-stack these days.

Captain America saying he can do this all day

There are too many moving parts. Frontend, design, backend, database, deployments, automation etc. I think it comes down to you are good at some of the stack.

Thoughts?

Top comments (9)

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steveblue profile image
Stephen Belovarich • Edited

Full-stack was in for awhile but it seems companies have been veering back toward specialization (with the exception of small startups).

I believe it is a good thing to collect some experience in all the things, but always have some area you excel at. Master some skill and find a team that needs that thing you do and appreciates you for who you are.

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Nick Taylor • Edited

Yeah, I hear ya. I've worked at small startups and you wear many hats because you're helping out. Last place I was at, I was hired as a frontend dev, but doing frontend/some backend, but at the same time helping with Kubernetes updates and deployments.

Now at a bigger company, it's pretty much just frontend I'm doing. Sometimes I touch the backend if it's related to a ticket I'm working on.

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richardj profile image
R☭

If the company is very small (or a personal project) you can do the full-stack, but doing that in a scaling company (in whatever way) it is just not really possible. Jack of all trades, master of none.

We also do not see any 'full-stack' anything in other careers.

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Sam Osborn

I work for a small education non-profit with a two person software team. We are both full stack, and it's wonderful. The only black boxes that exist are the only ones we make for each other. It keeps us honest and humble. From both a design and tech support perspective, work is efficient, clear, and self-managing.

I expect, in addition to start-ups, a lot of in-house IT professionals that work outside of the software contracting sector have a similar experience.

I think of it less as full-stack and more as village-style, or anarchic. Hierarchy and specialization exchanged for consensus and understanding.

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codercatdev profile image
Alex Patterson

Just be a broken comb 😁

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Alex Parra

I call it broad-stack.

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Prasanna Mestha

lmao. It's funny but It definitely makes sense

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Clavin June

I am now titled as "software engineer" in my workplace which means "full-stack". But i never handle devops ticket or anything, maybe the term of fullstack is different at different places, wdy think?

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Gerard Klijs

Not sure different places. Both sometimes it's just frontend and backend development what they mean. And sometimes it's just backend and ops. So I rather say 'I have done mainly backend, but also some frontend, ops and testing. Then saying I'm full stack.