alt Hacker NewsKeep in mind that the exact same arguments were being made 15, 20 years ago about why specialization was important. And yet, we look back at that era being the halcyon days of when specialization wasn't necessary.
Every era views itself as an intricate snowflake, but they rarely are.
I think that might be the goomba fallacy? There is no universal “we”. Some people think specialization is important. Others think generalists are important. Others talk about T-shaped skills. These are potentially all different groups of people that ideally realize that there are tradeoffs to each option and the best compromise is context dependent.
And I do think it’s more about how you build things than it is about the calendar. The calendar is just a proxy for what’s fashionable. For example, the startup I currently work at is in the process of incrementally simplifying our stack. Because we agreed that it was getting difficult to understand and expensive to operate. We don’t view this as turning the clock back to 2006; the discussions have framed it as a judicious application of the KISS principle. And yes, it has helped us break down knowledge silos and enable team members - especially data scientists - to be more self-sufficient.