Is that accurate? If so there's way more wildcard types on HN than I've bumped into. I need to move to somewhere more wildcard heavy!
When this article says wildcard I think "that's me!" because I do anything from web dev (actual role) to sysadmin (preferred role) to IT security to GDPR compliance to billing clients to looking for new clients to project management to hiring to data admin to research and development (my 2nd last job qualified for a government grant for this one haha) to ..
I've not yet been asked to do something I couldn't at a minimum do a "yeah that will do for now cheers" job on. You might not want me setting up your Kubernetes production cluster (yet), but a prototype or test net? Come back in an hour boss.
The list goes on. I can also plan, direct, shoot, edit, promote videos and podcasts too but it's been a while.
I'm not saying match the skillset but does everyone saying "that's me" have a skillset that looks like someone just picked what to learn by rolling dice? That's what I'm picturing when I identify myself as the wildcard person described in the article.
The list you give is very much what I consider normal software developer job (only even a bit wildcard-y is the billing). Any competent developer should be able to write web stuff, maintain their machine and handle setting up and maintaining servers, they should know about common security problems in the kind of product they are developing and GDPR compliance is pretty much a TODO list of data management features.
It is not like you are developing software today and tomorrow working in the kitchen making cakes and yesterday you were laying some asphalt.
I could give anyone of in my team task to prototype Kubernetes cluster. It is just normal computer stuff, but with a new/different tool. It is still very much under the same scope as other skills they need to be able to do their job.
I'd thoroughly agree with you in honesty, devs should be able to do it all, slackers! If I had a quid for every time I've thought "Full stack, my arse." and had to take over from someone I wouldn't need to work anymore.
My "full stack" (tho I don't bill as that because I'm still pretty terrible at frontend from scratch) is from the hardware up. I built a server from components, configured everything (OS, web server, database), built a web app, installed GitLab and runner, CI/CD'd blue green deployments, etc in about 12 hours to see if I could once.
I used Bunny.net's CDN for serving video and used their logging API to generate analytics (viewers watching, watch count, watch duration, bounce rate, etc). First media streamed through it successfully without leaking any auth keys and without any stuttering video was this, so epic when it worked! https://youtu.be/JozAmXo2bDE
Oddly enough I've made cakes (en-masse), haha. Crap at cooking (working on it) but I can follow a recipe like nobody's business! Stimulating enough in the moment but not a career choice for me. Just helping out a friend.
FWIW I was advising law firms and other big corps on their GDPR compliance until they got their DTO position set up. Not just making sure my own stuff was compliant (tho, that too).
There's also the boring stuff in there like being able to measure whatever the company wants to measure in Google Analytics, blah blah tag manager, A/B testing, this n that ad campaigns. Monitoring services (Zabbix) is something that's been useful to corps too. Sharding databases when they get too big. Backups. The less fun to brag about day to day stuff. Got a hat that needs a head in it? Chuck it here, I'll figure it out :)
Fair enough though, I'll ramp down the feeling special. I'll have to network more so I can find where these folks are working! I'd love to convince a couple of hat racks into joining me on a project some time, haha. One day. Marketing, frontend dev/des, and accounting are currently my main weak spots!
This is basically describing a smart person. Many smart people don't act like this because they correctly realize doing so is harmful to their career until they are higher in the org chart.
