The age of all-rounders

The last decade has seen a Job trend from specialists to generalists to all-rounders.

Full Stack engineers, Developer encompasses all functions, DevOps engineers, Techno Managers, Technical Program managers. Data Scientists and Researchers also must work in tandem with implementation specialist. Development extends to Production operations. Age of siloed work is gone. This is the age of collaboration and coordination and adaptability. Each must be reasonably aware of adjacent areas

In the past, IT companies interviewed for single, specific skill. This approach worked when pace of business and technology change was gradual and well spaced. But with transformation and change becoming the new constant in business, a broader set of skills and adaptability has become important. applications and Infrastructure is continuously undergoing modernization. Most organizations are always undergoing some transformation.

A people manager/director without adjacent technical skills working in a fast moving agile environment may not be able provide strategic direction to architects and engineers, drive decisions, mentor and assess performance.

With new decomposed architectures, an engineer cannot work in a silo. Communication, collaboration and coordination with other squads has become an everyday thing. Engineers without people management skills struggles to facilitate collaboration, manage career growth, or help employees prioritize projects.

With DevSecOps paradigms, everything as code, developers must know code, test automation and system bits. A SRE is a combo between System knowledge combined with software engineering.

A Full Stack engineers knows it all — frontend, backend, database and deployment.

Future Job outlook

While end-to end skilled workers are in demand, there is a parallel thread on low-code no-code platforms, AI assisted developer productivity and Cloud where coding is reduce and the focus should shift into thinking, design and planning

Specialists are highly sought after but they are available as consultants with deep expertise in a specific domain or technology for

For Organizations, this means

• Valuing, selecting, promoting, and encouraging candidates with the right technical and people(soft) skills. Hire technical experts with an open mind about feedback and learning in general. Anyone who thinks he knows it all attitude would be a no-no.
• Continue to build a culture of inclusion that respects both all skills and encourages cross-pollination as this is the best way for people to learn cross-skills . There is no skill that is a wasted learning.
• Another model is to encourage rotation within teams or outside teams to encourage cross-skilling, upskilling and reskilling.

For Leaders, this means being domain and technical experts and building teams that excel at creative problem-solving, and those that communicate effectively within and across teams.

For Individuals, this means developing a Growth mindset and being open minded to learning from anywhere, anyone and all the time.