alt Hacker NewsYes, but most people (especially a large portion on HN and Reddit) do not internalize it.
A SWE who has always worked in DevTooling companies will always be preferred by DevTooling companies over a generalist. A SWE who has always worked in AdTech will always be preferred by AdTech companies over a generalist. etc etc.
Software fundamentals - though useful - are table stakes skills at this point. No business wants to deal with the headache of on-ramping employees who have never worked in a specific domain or industry because it takes too long for a generalist employee to build the intuition needed to understand that segment of the industry.
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And therefore there will be a huge knowledge gap as companies refuse to hire anyone who hasn't worked in the field for 5+ years and people who want to work in that field but haven't don't get hired.
> No business wants to deal with the headache of on-ramping employees who have never worked in a specific domain or industry…
The usual sickness. If you don’t train people to become specialists and just expect them to fall from the sky, it’s only a question of time until you run out of specialists.
> Software fundamentals - though useful - are table stakes skills at this point.
I'm having a difficult time even seeing what we're talking about here. I see "seniors" in our industry that don't know what I would call the fundamentals of programming or software development; apparently not all fundamentals are created equal.