
Ask HN: Diverse but unspecialized back end dev; how do I specialize? - relayrelay
Throwaway for job reasons.<p>I am an experienced backend developer, who has been doing mixed freelance and full-time agency work on the backend (writing APIs, managing servers, log analysis, DB management, etc)<p>I have a variety of experience: I am very good at python, good at nodeJS, and workable in rails. I use Heroku, gitflow &amp; write solid documentation.<p>However, in doing job applications I feel...unprepared. Companies seem to ask for me to be incredibly diverse AND specialized: e.g. be a wizard at Chef, know how to manage bare metal and cloud, write in C and RoR, etc etc.<p>I do not feel qualified in those things, but I do experientially _inclined_ to be, i.e. I am familiar enough that I could learn them or are already quite familiar, but am not &quot;there&quot; yet.<p>Does this mean:
a) I am not qualified for this job and should find another
b) I am not qualified for this job but should interview anyway, to see how far behind I really am (or how top heavy their job description is)
c) I am qualified for this job, and all jobs assume you don&#x27;t know everything they want you to
d) hit the shed, learn everything
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ramtatatam
From my experience in most cases what you are being asked at interview will
very often have nothing (or close to nothing) in common with day to day job.
There are many reasons and one of them is unprepared interviewers who actually
have no idea what skills are really needed so they target everything they ever
heard about; or even worse - interviewers who want to expose their ego by
proving there is something they know you know nothing about.

I'm also far from being specialised and in my opinion it's great positive.
Especially when you aim startups - in smaller teams you need to use all skills
you have.

When you prepare yourself for corporate job then tweak your CV to make it
relevant to job you want to get. That means - do not mention irrelevant skills
and write about your achievements in relevant areas.

