Disclaimer: Just a piece of thought and not intended to pinpoint anyone or anything regarding the terms used in this article

Full stack developers are one of the most sought after role by recruiters or companies to kickstart their software development nowadays. Many has resolved to such approach to lessen their head-counts while getting more work done with reduced cost. What does this mean for other developers with specialisations or for upcoming fresh graduates?

Due to increasing trend or demand for such developers, it seems that upcoming fresh graduates or those who just started their career in software development has to adapt and up-skill themselves to stay relevant in-conjunction to the market. While it seems to be a good thing for newbies to gain more knowledge & cover more aspects regarding end-to-end development, what would happen to this practise in the long run eventually?

The truth is we are just normal programmers forced to know & develop most of the components in a software development lifecycle. In return, we tend to become mediocre programmers that knows fundamental concepts of both frontend and backend components while struggling to keep up with the fast-paced changes in the software industry for both stacks without a chance to focus and specialise in any one of it. In my opinion, its not a bad thing to know more regarding things across the field of work which helps to get things running fast and solving issues that arise on the surface, but in-depth knowledge of any field would provide to be more useful any day.

Finally, I believe everything would be brought down to quality or speed of delivery. For instance, startups may opt-in for hiring full stack developers to get the development started and may invest in specialised developers later on in their product development cycle depending on their respective revenues. Quality might not seem to be an important element in the beginning while building the brand, but in the long run, quality is one of the main reasons behind a brand's success or failure. What i'm trying to say is there could be tonnes of great full stack developers around that may suffice for the current business needs, but it shouldn't be a standard of hiring as specialised developers have their fair share of expertise & knowledge which may seem useful in unexpected circumstances.

In a nutshell, I'm not against full stack developers nor the concept of it, it's just more and more people have a misunderstanding on the concept thus producing more overworked and underpaid programmers day to day.

So, it's your turn to think whether full stack developers are victims of the system or a revolution in software industry to produce programmers that knows it all or super developers. Do let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

Image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay