

Ask HN: So what's the job market like for generalists, really? - esonderegger

As I read all the outrage about the Penny Arcade posting today, I&#x27;m troubled by seeing two seemingly contradictory responses:
1. A sad resignation that tons of very smart people will end up applying and be willing to work for the conditions that are offered.
2. A belief that the generalists with skill sets even approaching what is requested are in such high demand&#x2F;short that this posting is ridiculous.<p>I&#x27;m genuinely curious about the state of this job market because as I read the posting I couldn&#x27;t help but notice that it felt like a perfect match for my own skill set. It sometimes seems like startups are looking for specialists&#x2F;experts in a particular area to augment the general knowledge they already have. Also, the limited runway provided by seed&#x2F;angel&#x2F;VC funding doesn&#x27;t allow enough time for training. Whereas the Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. size companies don&#x27;t need someone who can code front-end and back-end, design, and sysadmin all at a passable level because they already have tons of people who can do one of those things at a very high level.
======
ryanfitz
I can only speak for NYC, but its very hot. A couple of months ago my startup
failed and I was looking for a job. I was only interested in early stage
startups and wanted to work on every part of the tech stack (frontend,
backend, devops....). In the span of 2 weeks I met with over 2 dozen startups
and received a number of great offers.

~~~
podviaznikov
how/where did you met them at NYC?

~~~
ryanfitz
About 50% were through my personal network, the rest came from various online
sources. Angellist worked really well for me, I highly recommend trying them
if you're looking for early stage startups. Linkedin was overloaded with
recruiters, I got little use from it.

~~~
esonderegger
Thank you! When my Marine Corps contract expires in about ten months I'm going
to be looking and both the advice to try AngelList and the confidence that it
will be alright will be a huge help.

