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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

"Junior in every department" really struck hard for me.

I know just enough of basically everything to get by or as a starting point, but I lack that really deep knowledge that comes from using a small group of skills and tools for years. I feel that switching languages and frameworks and tools and OSes a bunch of times early in my career has really held me back.

I don't mind supporting my team, what I don't like is how companies will structure an entire team as support around one or two people. I am not a rock star but I am still capable of contributing more than "support". I want to build real features.

Especially when I know I'm capable of doing the things those devs do, just maybe not at the speed they do.

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I’m in a similar position, albeit mostly because even though my professional career has been predominantly one stack, there’s just no real chance to ever really get to learn the ecosystem. Most of the work hasn’t called for me learning much of an ecosystem, especially since in very bureaucratic environment, a lot of it is simply delegated to someone else.

I often half joke about how I don’t know any programming languages which is unfortunately kinda of true. I’ve toyed with a lot of languages, including ones that your average developer may not have even heard of, but at the end of the day it’s just toying.

I'm in the opposite position; I've spent almost my entire five-year career focusing on one quite narrow tech stack and I'm good at it but I'm also sick of it and desperate to learn something new. I just changed jobs and I took a substantial pay cut for the chance to get professional experience in a new tech stack, which isn't ideal, but I really want to work with a new language and I don't know what else to do (there was no possibility of diversifying at my previous position.)

My point is that both the "short and fat" and "spikey" approaches have their pros and cons.

I'm curious, what stacks did you trade?

Previously: Rails. New job: Elixir.

I have also been working on different tech throughout my career. Do you suffer from imposter syndrome because of this? I often feel like I don't know as much as my peers do. I can't do things that quickly. I am in a very good workplace now where my manager appreciates my work. But most of the times I feel I am not contributing like others. I don't even understand that much.

Yes, I sometime have a strong doubt of my abilities. You're not alone in that.

How big a team are you working in? In most places I've worked the teams (or company) were small enough that even new hires would get a change to work on something big if they have the capacity.

I have basically always been on teams of 5 devs.

Maintaining legacy stuff.

"Junior" is not the same as "fat & short". It puts stigma onto you (no experience, green) and your capabilities (needs guidance, possibly bad judgment) which is certainly unfounded after working several years in the industry, no matter how niche your stack was. Switching technologies does not make you a "Junior" when you have loads of war stories to tell.

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