Ask HN: Are generalists doomed in the job market? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are generalists doomed in the job market?

25 pointsthrowawayayayay11 comments

Disclaimer: this is not a "hire me" kind of post but a genuine Ask HN.

HN, I am seriously struggling to market myself as a professional being a generalist. (more like T-shaped towards software engineering, but you get the point). You can find several articles describing how being a generalist should be the best for you: fact is, it isn't if you are looking for a job.

Me: 30yo, generalist engineer, PhD (without pubs), southern Europe.

  - Did own a Startup for 2 years, made some, not much, but some money.

  - Experienced public speaker (I honestly love it and do it well)

  - Did code & publish Android apps for 20k downloads.

  - Did code & deploy backends (mainly AWS).

  - Did manage products.

  - Did create better than average artwork when needed.

  - Did manage teams, albeit small.

  - Did marketing management.

  - Did data science (not ML, or not yet at least)

  - Lecturer for 5 years in engineering subjects

  - All the above while being an applied researcher (technology transfer, consulting) at university for 6 years: Did R%D for several companies.

You see, people like me don't fit ANY frigging job type.

  - Can you work as a sw dev? I'm probably not as skilled as a professional dev. I would never be time-efficient as a professional.

  - Can you be a product/R%D/marketing/xxx manager then?

Well, I should have the experience. If yes, do you have >5 years experience in related industry? No. Then no you can't.

  - You definitely have experience as a professor. Can you be a professor at least? No publications, sorry, nada.

I could go on and on. At my age you have to "have been a specialist" in any role for years.

  "You know, kid, startups need people like you *at least* in their early stage"

Being in Southern Europe doesn't really help, startups here have no money in early stage.

Is it just me? Do I REALLY have to be entrepreneur to work? What would you do?

Please don't say this:

'Can you work as a sw dev? I'm probably not as skilled as a professional dev. I would never be time-efficient as a professional.'

I have seen many fellow developers say things like this (impostor syndrome). Productivity as a code monkey is rarely relevant to jobs and probably not relevant to the jobs you want. You have worked in a variety of roles and have lots of life experience. This may make you many times more efficient in other essential parts of software engineering. Clear communication, problem solving, planning, understanding actual customer and business needs. The most efficient software engineers I have seen don't type [insert some huge number] lines of code a day, they ask good questions and fully understand the domain before the tackling a problem.

As for your problem finding a job, I would be working on creating a portfolio of code samples/projects in the field I wanted to work. Also I would make sure to tailor my resume depending on who I sent it to and what the job description lists.

One successful approach I have seen is contacting companies you want to work for (works best on smaller companies) and trying to talk to someone before giving them a resume. This can be accomplished at meetups or cold calling/emailing :shudder:. When you talk to them you identify what real problems they are facing. Then tailor the resume to those specific problems (or even throwing in a case-study of how you would approach and solve them).

Hm, I wonder does cold-email actually work?! I mean do you know of cases where they hired someone out of the blue via email pitch?

I only have anecdotal evidence but I helped a colleague use this successfully. Sourcing companies to email on angelist then using google/linkedin to find contact info of the appropriate person instead of going through the career page. Cold emailed 5 companies and was able to initiate conversations with 3 without sending a resume. The 3 showed interest but after the conversations he only wanted to follow up with 1 and was able to tailor the resume very specifically. Lead to an offer.

I concur with the others here. Your skills are NOT the problem, and your accomplishments in software alone are probably way above the average applicant.

Market yourself better! Use buzzwords like "full-stack" instead of "generalist", and don't hesitate to call yourself a software developer (unless you'd rather do management) but emphasize your flexibility, broad experience, and specialist knowledge in other fields.

You seem like having the impostor syndrome and/or problems selling yourself. Your skills, as listed above, are above average. I can assure you that you can land a remote job with good pay-check.

Given your track record, I believe the ideal positions for you (and the most lucrative) are managerial positions[1].

[1] https://whoishiring.io/search/45.164/-101.030/2/?search=mana...

You have to pick something and stick with it. I think a lot of us have these urges to jump into something new. The industry I'm currently in is definitely not the most stimulating (for me anyway), but I've been doing it for 7 years now and have stuck to it (I'm 37). Prior to that I was an MCSE, did a ton of hardware hacking, marketing, etc but found that I didn't master anything.

I'm a proud generalist too. One thing I've been investigating recently is the concept of so called 'microdegrees', also called nano-degrees:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdegree

Open Badges is also a neat idea: http://openbadges.org/

Open Badges looks even more promising if combined with blockchain tech so it's impossible to forge your ability / qualification, unlike today where a large portion of 'degrees' can be bought and sold on the black market for very little money.

> I am seriously struggling to market myself...

Who exactly are you marketing yourself to? What's your target profile look like?

True, HR will not understand generalists. But CTO's will get your tech experience. CMO's will get your marketing/speaking experience.

Tailor your expertise and capabilities to the senior executive that you can best help. Weinberg offers excellent advice to strategic targeting > http://www.newsalescoach.com/2014/03/stop-over-analyzing-you...

Some ideas:

1. Remote job as a "developer evangelist"? An engineer doing marketing and education, basically.

2. Don't go and tell people "I won't be as efficient as professional SW developer", just go and apply for the job.

3. Remote programming job at small company/startup, where multiple skills are actually valued.

Tailor the application and resume to the individual company. Focus on the skills that you have which are applicable to the situation. Being able to frame yourself as the person they want is key. That you can do other stuff as well will turn into gravy rather than a downside.

You'll just need to create a coherent narrative of how it all ties together. It's okay if you consider yourself a generalist, but they don't need to know. Sell them what they want.

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