Full Stack Development: specialize in generalization

There are many buzz words in the tech field and i feel even more in the web field. You put an "ify" behind any verb and you have a company. "Full Stack" is not one of those phrases. It is a real thing. It has its own set of problems and techniques. Here are some ideas of what it takes to be a Full Stack programmer.

The tech stack you are familiar with. A full stack developer can implement features on the client, server scripting environment and on the database. You should be an 8 in each area. Im not sure exactly what 8 is but if you think you are an 8 then you probably can implement a feature in all these areas without me holding your hand. Further more you can identify where a feature is to be implemented. The Full Stack developer understands how all requirements of a project will be built.

Full Stack developers also understand the trade offs with implementation decisions and where bottle necks will occur. This is an important point because this is where usefulness comes into the trade. Being able to piviot logic to particular areas of a code base and save you money, time, or just might be the best solution. Having that choice is a good thing and its something a Full Stack developer should excel in.

When something is time urgent Full Stack developer are excellent hackers. If you just need something to work no matter how it scales or maintainable it is nice to have the knowledge of where in the code base adding such a feature might be the least obtrusive and easiest to refactor for later attention.

Specializations are good. Advancing an area of concern, allowing for parallel development and just having the power of interchangeable parts is good. I still suggest having one Full Stack developer in you group. ROI on full stack developers is high and I think you will find that they will make your company as flexible and agile as the implementation abilities are. Depending on your product a few specialized developers might be important but its nice to have a small core of your developer base be able to maintain and fix 80% of your product.