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Comment by nraynaud | Hacker News Reader

I hate specialization, and I want the person who develop something to think about how that stuff will be deployed and kept online. In particular, some tradeoffs have to be made between the development side and the production side, and I want the same person to see both side and decide with a technical criterion (or just choose one option, and later reverse course and change it), not on a "it's not my problem" criterion.

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There is too much. It's specialization out of necessity. I know enough "DevOps" to be dangerous, but in addition to having a deep knowledge of our product's codebase, the multiple features of our product, configurations, etc. there are not enough hours in the day to master (not simply be familiar with) Jenkins pipeline, Docker, AWS, Ansible, Zookeeper, etc, etc.

99% of the people who could claim to have knowledge of all the above in their organization either have a very shallow (read: not useful) knowledge, OR their product itself is simply the gluing together of various DevOps technologies listed, so there is little more to know outside that.

it is definitely possible to have fairly deep level of knowledge at all layers it just takes effort.

That said, the larger the project, the more the need for specialization and the less possible it is for someone to keep up with all changes and be a domain expert.

I disagree. Maybe, there's a couple of guys/gals around that can go up and down the software and hardware stack and know where issues may lie when there's a problem, but I doubt there are many.

As a someone that's been in the tech industry a very long time, I came to the realization a long time ago that I couldn't be the expert at everything. Can I dabble in Oracle, Windows, Linux? Sure, would I want to bet my job on how much I know some of these products in the time of crisis, hell No!!!

My last job as an employee, I had to install AWS, develop some server software, develop some web facing software, develop some embedded software (with a bit of easy real time), get the freaking 2G to work, get the sensors to work properly, model the mechanical parts to install the embedded device on site, order all that crap (electronics and mechanics) from the providers, create the boxes, try to think about lightnings and how not to fry the customer's equipment. And get the sandcastle to stay put.

That's what happens when you work at startups, there is no plethora of employees, and a lot of work.

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