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Comment by Singletoned | Hacker News Reader

My rule of thumb for writing things like job descriptions is that it doesn't mean anything unless someone else might write the opposite.

So "Software Engineers who want to write great code" is meaningless, as is "committed to building the best products".

But I disagree with some of his other examples:

> solve problems from beginning to end: everything from product conceptualizations to engineering implementations.

This tends to put me off a bit. Just like "full-stack developer". I agree everyone should be able to do beginning to end when needed, but I much prefer to be able to specialize. And I really don't want to be involved with "product conceptualizations".

> solve the toughest problems fast--the first time

This is also a bit off-putting. It suggests that they aren't very tolerant of failure. I may just be a bad developer, but I generally assume the first solution we build won't be the correct one.

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> solve problems from beginning to end: everything from product conceptualizations to engineering implementations.

If you prefer to be specialized, a warning that it won't happen is a positive feature of the listing, so that both you and the hiring company can save some time.

>This tends to put me off a bit. Just like "full-stack developer". I agree everyone should be able to do beginning to end when needed, but I much prefer to be able to specialize. And I really don't want to be involved with "product conceptualizations".

Depends where you work. Our company has two experienced developers and we can both do pretty much the full stack - and we need to. We specialize a bit, I am better at Django, the other guy is better at front end but at the end of the day we need to be able to do both.

Ok, that's half the stack... Who specialises in the lower parts?

You aren't full-stack unless you are writing the Verilog for the chips that run your other code.

Seriously though the term full-stack is pointless as everyone has a different definition of what that means but still wants to say "I am full-stack"

The size and contents of the stack might change from application to application, but it has a consistent definition as, "Whatever it is we need to hire developers to do, I can do all of it."

The parent poster's point was, if you're going to credibly say you "can do all of it", you need to list expertise in x86 assembly and VHDL on your resume. Otherwise, you're only a "most stack" developer.

Not at all. Most companies will never need to write assembly, or anything at that level, so its not part of the stack.

If you want to be that pedantic, do you need to forge the metals you use in your computers since thats part of the stack as well?

I would reply on my new machine but I'm still waiting on my drum of oil so I can process it into plastics for the keyboard.

In the context of web development, I've always thought of full stack as: deep knowledge of front end, more than one back end language/framework, database optimization, networking and linux system administration, and a little bit of graphic design sense. If you can ship a professional-looking and scalable app alone, you can call yourself a full stack web developer. If you're working with embedded systems, obviously the definition changes.

That's not consistent at all, since what companies need isn't consistent.

You can be contrarian about it but full stack includes assembly.

Rackspace. Though we are setting up our own dev server locally.

> it doesn't mean anything unless someone else might write the opposite

This also works great for filtering political platforms.

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