Ask Slashdot: Are 'Full Stack' Developers a Thing?

"It seems that nearly every job posting for a software developer these days requires someone who can do it all," complains Slashdot reader datavirtue, noting a main focus on finding someone to do "front end work and back end work and database work and message queue work...." I have been in a relatively small shop that for years that has always had a few guys focused on the UI. The rest of us might have to do something on the front-end but are mostly engaged in more complex "back-end" development or MQ and database architecture. I have been keeping my eye on the market, and the laser focus on full stack developers is a real turn-off.

When was the last time you had an outage because the UI didn't work right? I can't count the number of outages resulting from inexperienced developers introducing a bug in the business logic or middle tier. Am I correct in assuming that the shops that are always looking for full stack developers just aren't grown up yet?
sjames (Slashdot reader #1,099) responded that "They are a thing, but in order to have comprehensive experience in everything involved, the developer will almost certainly be older than HR departments in 'the valley' like to hire."

And Dave Ostrander argues that "In the last 10 years front end software development has gotten really complex. Gulp, Grunt, Sass, 35+ different mobile device screen sizes and 15 major browsers to code for, has made the front end skillset very valuable." The original submitter argues that front-end development "is a much simpler domain," leading to its own discussion.

Share your own thoughts in the comments. Are "full-stack" developers a thing?

Comments

Developers always have core strengths and weakness

[CraigCruden]

Yes, there are full stack developers but as with any developer they may know how to code the full stack -- but they will typically be substantially stronger as a server/ messaging / or UI developer and thus much weaker on the other side. It is always better to have people that have a full understanding and the ability to step in if required (especially as you become more senior) of the full stack. If you have people that are purely silo developers - then you will often get into situations where your UI developer wants the server to take responsibility and your server thinks it is too frivolous for them and should be done in the UI.

"Full stack" developers come from "boot camps"

[whoever57]

I know someone who has a liberal arts education (all the way to PhD) and then went to one of these coding boot camps. She now describes herself as a "full stack" developer, despite very little training and experience in the field.

Tired in General

[countach]

I'm tired in general of people who want to hire with super specific skill requirements. There is so many technologies out there that you end up faking 80% of the crap on your resume. I mean fair enough, if you want a Java developer, you want someone who did Java before. But apart from that, I'd rather hire on talent than specific skills.

As an aside, as a matter of pure research, if you can only hire people on one data point, you're far better of hiring someone for ANY position based on IQ than any other factor such as qualifications, a good performance in the job interview, an impressive resume etc. That's just science. So it's pretty likely that if toss resumes in the bin, and forgo an interview and just give an IQ test, you'll actually get better employees.

Yeah, I May Be One

[jimbrooking]

Am a retired volunteer. Started learning web technologies after I retired in 1999: ASP, MS Access, HTML and a little Javascript and SQL where I volunteered for a non-profit. Lately, have designed and developed a very interactive website for my homeowners association with extensive MySQL, PHP, CSS, JavaScript + jQuery, and custom HTML. I use an IDE (NetBeans). I don't claim to be the fastest coder in the world, but I have evolved my skills to use the programming tools needed to do what I want to do to keep my site interesting and useful to our community. I am 78 years old, reasonably healthy, and still learning: a survival strategy I'd recommend for anyone.

Yup, me.

[Space cowboy]

I am older, as the summary suggests - I'll be 49 this year, but these days I do:

• verilog code on the FPGA, which talks to the
• embedded micro (If there isn't one in the verilog or a hard macro on the FPGA), which is controlled by
• the board-management micro, which talks to
• the thunderbolt or lightning connector, which needs a
• custom PCIe driver kernel extension on the host box (Mac or Linux), which wants a
• user-interface library that applications will use to talk to the kext, and I provide a
• GUI or shell app that exercises the hardware, and sometimes a
• Full-blown application with complex threaded user-interaction which often needs
• GPU accelerated display routines, which often use
• OpenCL or Cuda routines for the heavy lifting

I don't think of myself as a "full-stack developer", I just think of myself as a developer. The goal is to solve problems, the more tools you have at your disposal the better.

Re: Developers always have core strengths and weak

[AmiMoJo]

I guess I am full stack... Everything from R&D to requirements to electronic design to firmware to validation and debugging to production support.

It's definitely undervalued. If you grow into it at one company the raises don't usually match your new skill set. If you are looking to move most places will be looking for specific skills and won't value your full stack abilities properly. That's just the way hiring works it seems.

I've noticed that US companies operating in Ireland pay very low wages. They contact me with offers that are â20k below anything I'd even consider, but want the skills and experience I have. They usually have very poor benefits too. Minimum holiday, no real perks. I don't know how they manage to recruit anyone. UK companies are often the same.

EU companies tend to be a bit better. The Netherlands is a great example. Good pay, 30% tax free income for foreigners, good holidays, holiday buy-back, lunch provided, car chargers, bike facilities, nice offices etc. Sweden and Norway seem good too, if the climate is okay for you. Language could be an issue.