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Ask HN: What position should a generalist apply for?

21 points by inertialforce ↗ HN
Hey HN,

I'd love some advice on my situation. I'm planning to move out to the bay area in January and would ideally like to spend a couple years working at a startup before eventually starting my own.

For the past year I've successfully worked with a bunch of clients as a small web design studio in NY which I founded. During this time I've done every job required when starting a small business by yourself and have collected a range of skills. I've always operated under the assumption that absolutely anything can be learnt and executed. This has served me well but I'm at a loss as to what position would be best suited for me at a startup. I can handle most front end development, design, and am not afraid of getting into back end development or even software engineering. To give you an idea, the last client work I did evolved from web development to 3d modeling & 3d printing to electronic prototyping.

Basically what I'm asking is for any advice for someone with no contacts in the bay area and an unclearly defined skill set? Would I even be a good match for a startup? I've got a runway of a couple months of living expenses and would like nothing more than to give this a shot!

You guys are awesome, thanks again for your help.

14 comments

[ 7.9 ms ] story [ 69.7 ms ] thread
mchannon
Just as people say they want to reward creativity but subconsciously don't, you'll find that putting yourself out there as a master-of-all-trades will leave you with few callbacks.

It is the nature of business that if they want to hire somebody, it's for a narrowly-defined scope (solving any and all problems is something a CEO or more likely a founder does, not really anybody else). Imagine doing a carpentry job and finding inside your box of 2000 nails a "rare and special" piece of metal that isn't a nail, but can do the job of a nail, screw, brad, rivet, and/or wi-fi hotspot. You're not going to consider it a bonus, even though maybe you should.

Find something that you can do well, that's in demand, that pays well, and position yourself to focus on that on your resume. If not just one but a few of your passions meet these characteristics, put together a few monolithic resumes and send them to the appropriate places. They don't have to completely eliminate your ancillary experiences, but they should mention them in a downplayed manner. Remember, the resume is not the job; merely your way of getting it.

inertialforce
Thank you for the well thought out comment. It does seem like depth over breadth is prized when being hired for a specific position. This seems the most likely approach, and you're absolutely right about the resume not being the job.
fapi1974
I actually agree with mchannon - think of it as a "stake-in-the-ground" exercise. If you don't really care/can do anything, then you won't care if you pick something specific and push hard on it. Showing passion for the choice, whatever it is, will carry you much further than showing openness to all roles. In your shoes I'd push for a product management role, by the way.
inertialforce
Yup, thats a great analogy. I never really thought of product management but that does make sense. I'll add it to the list, thank you
snowwrestler
Sounds like you might be a good fit for a very early stage startup, when it's like 3-4 people in a room hacking a product together from nothing. Unfortunately, those are not really "positions" in the traditional sense--you won't find them on any job board and they might not pay well (if at all). You probably have to know the founders--or be a founder yourself.

If you want a technical position in a bigger company, I agree with the other post here to focus in on your area of greatest strength, and then salt your resume with your other skills. Valve talks about looking for "T-shaped" people, who have a deep expertise in one area, but competence in a whole bunch of others. You want to find your deep area and focus on that.

Another option might be a product or project manager type position. Those often call for wide skill sets (or at least familiarity). The downside is that the actual work is likely to be mostly meetings, emails, and spreadsheets.

inertialforce
I was considering early stage startups but yes the main concern with that would be the financial constraints. I agree on all the other points, thank you.
mastermojo
I'm working at shopkick (straight out of school) as a generalist right now. I think a lot of the official titles of our engineers are just "member of the technical staff". The culture here is that people shuffle around from teams and projects (if they want to) and people touch a lot of aspects of the company's code base. For example, I've written server side code and android screens. As part of a growth initiates I've also done html/css/js pages and spent time analyzing data through sql queries.

The engineering team here is a little over 20 people, and the entire company is less than 100. I guess my point is there are companies that are on solid ground financially that will hire generalists. If you are potentially interested in what I am doing, shoot me a message and I can make an intro for you.

inertialforce
That is an ideal position and it sounds like you're learning a lot too. To an outsider it would difficult to find a position like this unless you actually have first hand knowledge. Thank you for the insight, I just sent you an e-mail.
X4
hmm, I'm in the same boat and just finished my compsci degree. Any advice would be awesome!
alexmr
With a technical + business background like that, I agree that product management might be a great fit, assuming you're interesting in getting away from code and focusing more on project management, specs, design, etc.

I'd also say you sound pretty ideal as a co-founder for a general web or mobile product. That's a position where a wide range of skills are useful and I'm sure there's lots of people out here who would love to talk to you.

inertialforce
Yea, definitely looking into product management. I would like to be a co-founder one day but before that I'd like to start with a solid foundation. For now I'm happy to help someone else build and realize their vision.
alok-g
I can connect well with you on that, being a generalist (+ specialist) myself. I have breadth, and depth in many areas (so would be more like a sparse comb than a T-shape that snowwrestler described). People who have worked with me, coming from different fields of expertise, have seen me as an expert in their respective field often without realizing that I am doing the same in many fields.

Yet, I suffer somewhat because those who do not know me are unable to see the specific area of expertise in my CV, which is filled with a much wider set than what they need or even follow.

I end up becoming the go-to person for those who know me and need help with multidisciplinary research projects or system architecture, solving problems that not well-defined, etc. Such jobs are not common though, and are also hard to get to unless people know you ahead of time.

So my advice to you would also be along the lines of what mchannon and others have written. Develop and area of expertise that you think is and will be in demand over the next several years. Then keep evolving.

inertialforce
Thank you for that candid response. Once you get over the barrier of being in a network it seems like you get to work on some really interesting and challenging problems. I don't understand why there is such an inherent bias to being multidimensional.
[dead] cristinaemerson
you may go for human resource (HR) generalis

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