IT bod who does a bit of everything: You might want to specialise if that pay rise proves elusive Average salaries for tech jobs advertised in the UK are up 1.7 per cent compared to last year, according to jobs-board botherers at Reed Technology. Its State of Skills survey said PHP developers saw advertised salaries jump 6.9 per cent, Java developers' pay packets went up 6 per cent and data scientists' 5.9 per cent. The …
Full stack for us is hardware and software.
Sadly "full stack" in this case is = (html/js/css) frontend, some (ruby,php,python, java) as backend.
We'd not recognise the stack as it seems to be supported on lies and bovine excrement.
Security = not my job gov.
Administration = not my job gov.
Architecture = not my job gov.
Documentation = well you get the point..
A Full-Stack developer is a programmer who thinks that the defaults in Entity Framework are OK. Every text field is NVARCHAR(MAX), every date field is DATETIME2(7), every numerical field is INT and there are GUIDS & ROWEVERSIONs scattered everywhere.
Making a database is a developer's job. DBAs are such drama-queens.
As a full stack developer I even cring at databases being created with the default settings of Entity Framework especially NVARCHAR(MAX). I prefer creating databases the right way with T-SQL.
There's been a few colourful words while "fixing" this mess. In the end, the database performance has improved considerably.
I laugh because my college flatmate, let's call him Nigel, used to bemoan the difficulty of choosing the right variable type and wished there was just one which he christened "effing-great-big-massive". Fortunately for him, and his 486sx, Borland C++ was a bit more picky...
We need many more web developers - people who know how to scrape stuff from stack overflow and make the internet even better that it already is. The last thing we need is people who can actually program - my retirement plans positively hinge on a surplus of idiot barista web-tools and hysterically increasing property prices.
Don't you just love that you are being out-competed by those who are 100% competent in everything from UART 16650 driver development to Agile node.js Content Management systems. Or just a really dumb buzzphrase like "Full Stack Development"?
There is a time for separating fools from their money and doing it with a clear conscience.
I can't help feeling that there's always going to be an advantage in being someone who knows several areas in detail rather than overspecialising. On the one hand you have value in being possibly the only one able to connect several of those silos to work together when they they need to and on the other you're not stranded when one of the areas goes out of fashion. OTOH you do have the advantage over someone who has sketchy knowledge of everything.
This kind of specialization happened in manufacturing decades ago. After the fallout, many companies reversed course and brought their engineering and manufacturing back together on at least a smaller scale, and then engineers with hands-on manufacturing experience became one of those specialized skills that companies are willing to pay extra for. Strange world.
I know it's not going to work out any better in IT. Having the guys who maintain it completely separate from guys who develop it guarantees unmaintainable systems.
These days, looks to me like you need to be a specialized front-end developer to stay on top of the constantly changing UI frameworks, and deliver something which doesn't look like geocities.
If you can do that, and also stay on top of the always-beta tools for the inevitable public cloud supposed to hold the data, then congratulations on being full-stack.
Similarly, what to they mean by " .NET developer"?
There's a sizeable group of employers for whom that means ASP.NET and MVC. However it could equally be quants using C# or developing mobile apps with Xamarin.
I always assumed a "full stack" developer was someone who used JavaScript to solve every problem,,,
I can't take anything they say serious after giving Equifax awards year after year. Not only that but you specialise and then find everyone dumps the thing you've specialised in.
I know a certain place that uses a piece of Low Code software. They are trying to get their staff to "specialise" in it. It's not working. The staff realise after a few months, that pretty much no one else uses said Low Code app so they can't take the knowledge with them. They then realise they are getting paid peanuts for what they do, so leave only with the experience of "doing a bit of coding" because they can't advertise the Low Code app as no one has ever heard of it.
A full stack developer seems to be what we used to call a developer before coding meant "hack a bit of HTML" - apparently it takes a few years of your sleeves rolled up and a bit of reading to actually learn how to do it well and that is just too hard - hence, it pays a bit better, go figure?
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