I was curious why I wasn't getting a lot of hits on my resume, so I talked to a recruiter at a networking event who had seen my application (for one of the "unicorns") and she said they where uncomfortable with how entrepreneurial it looked.
I removed the sections from my resume, removed all of my contract work too - only listed the internships and found some other grads (that got jobs) resumes to copy the language style. Pretty much instantly my resume was getting me double or triple the interviews.
Bummer too, because I worked my ass off and always had the false impression that employers would like that.
Sometimes its the gap between marketing (how they want the company to appear) and HR I think. Marketing wants innovators, HR wants workhorses that move in a strait line and don't try new things.
The benefit to a motivated engineer is you can give them problems to solve instead of specs. The outcome or results can be less predictable but can also be much more effective.
"You're perfect for the role", "You have just the skills we need", "you're by far the best of those interviewed"
but by email later, sometimes directly
"we think you'll get bored", "we think you'll leave after six months" etc
(Sometimes, "we think you're a bit overqualified")
For sanity's sake I went on a few contract interviews, and usually got an offer.
My experience was that employers are utterly terrified of someone who's got some entrepreneurial or business history. Sure the money was less, but there many reasons to want to go back to employment.
As they didn't like it, I always wondered why so many invited me to interview when the 5 years of successful business and 4 years of contracting was very clear to see on my resume.
But I completely agree with what you've said. I am a problem solver or a product engineer or whatever this skill set combination is being called these days. I pull from a wide range of experiences to solve problems and I'm not very happy when I have to work off of a rigorous spec.
Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much to most employers in my experience. I don't fit in to most places and most places don't know what to do with me. It's made for a rather frustrating career over the last decade but I simply don't know what else to do.
Not sure if HR thinks that deeply during resume review, though. If you're not getting past that screen it's probably just match-the-buzzwords-listed-in-posting density—more "filler" words (started awesome website, did amazing things) means less % matching words
After graduation, I had a few tell companies me that my work during school as sort of a "black mark" and I think it's sort of humorous looking back at it now. Currently, I'm the technical lead for my dev team and the contract work I did while in school is probably the best experience I had for the work I do now. Gave me a broad range of experience that reinforced the theory and concepts I was learning while in school.
I worked at a F500 building tools to visualize big data and had a great time. Learned a lot and had a lot of freedom.
Afterwards, a VC funded startup - didn't really fit in, most of my co-workers where hardcore academics and it had a lot of micromanaging.
Also did some contract gigs, subcontracting for another company which could be good, bad or neutral (all depends on the client).
Self-employement is awesome, because you get to explore a ton of new things. You get to learn about SEO, business models, cutting costs to increase profits, increasing conversions, brand image, UX, etc. You also get to know your audience really well.
In my case, the biggest downside is I could never build a strong network because most of my revenue was coming from ads and donations and the target audience was younger.
It's easier to network when you are out and about, and always working with people who have their own networks.
I'd love to start a company (on a bigger scale) some day, when I have a stronger network, a larger skillset, and some capital so I can make sure I am feeding myself every week :)
Specialization is indeed valuable but it's not a binary master-of-one vs jack-of-all market. I am A+ in a specific platform, A in a couple of market segments, B+ in a handful of valuable technologies, B in many professional skills, C+ in most business activities, and C in everything that I have never encountered before. I don't need to be A+ in everything I touch and I am definitely not just a C in every single trade.
You don't have to start a business or be lucky enough to head up a team at a large business to get a chance to apply your skills fully. I don't want to do either so I consult with small-to-mid-sized business and research+plan+code+test+train whatever they need. For someone on a W2, this seems unconventional and risky. Don't want to sugar-coat it - it is. But what it's not is unsatisfying.
If you are in a position in life to take a small risk on yourself, pick up a small consulting gig that is more than just pure coding/technical. The more you perform like a vendor and business partner and less like an hourly contract employee, the closer you get to applying your full range of skills.
And you know what? In big shops, painting outside of your lines actually can cause problems. Questioning decisions on things going on outside of one's domain causes slowdown (at the very least, wasted time in meetings where people explain why that stupid idea actually has to be that way, etc.) and frequently, conflict, because when the norm is "stay in your (metaphorical) cube", questioning decisions can all too easily look like an accusation of incompetence or as a power play.
Go where your other skills have value.
We want our senior developers to be willing to dig into business requirements and constraints without being asked to. Curiosity, orthogonal business knowledge, etc are important at that level and higher.
However, we've seen multiple times that the junior developers just can't do it with the rare exception. They have enough work getting up to speed on one or more of: the language, the large internal system, the large client systems, how the client works, how to be an employee, how to deliver value over the long term and not go 2 weeks with no delivery then 2 weeks with, etc.
Do you have a direct manager who talks with you about your career growth? A good one might help you find projects that engage your broader interests. There are certainly roles and projects that involve some degree of inter disciplinary work, and not just at founder or team lead levels. If not at your company, there are certainly some at others. Startups especially welcome diverse contributions from early employees.
Hope you find a good outlet for your interests! If not in an engineering role, maybe try a side project.
I have a few dev managers and experienced engineers who I've kept in contact with from an old summer gig - they all think I should join/create a startup.
I'm actually on the job market right now (Seattle) - but considering moving to CA because recruiters in that area seem to like me a lot more. Might be a culture thing.