The irony of getting pigeon-holed
Posted by SweetStrawberry4U@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 14 comments
The longer you work with the same tech-stack, the more obsolete you become ?
Specialization is a curse ?
Over 10 years experience "mastering a tech-stack" and opportunities become narrow ?
Nevertheless, tech-stacks evolve. Improvements are made. Staying up-to-date doesn't appear to help as much as it should.
Why is that ?
What other industry / career-track suffers from similar problem ? I guess, Escorting & Prostitution ?
sqPIdt37xCHo0BKbwups@reddit
people always forget about the other fundamental type of business, which is Drug Dealing.
a_reply_to_a_post@reddit
which escorts allow pigeons in their holes? asking for a friend
ninetofivedev@reddit
This entire post was kind of out of pocket, but shit really got turned up with that last line. That's your example? A profession that is pretty obscure from the mainstream like SW? OP should be studied in a lab. Real serial killer vibes on this one.
a_reply_to_a_post@reddit
it’s like.. “tell me you’re a drupal dev without saying you’re a drupal dev”
MichelangeloJordan@reddit
Pretty sure I read about this pigeonhole principle in my foundations of CS class.
zninjamonkey@reddit
Lawyers
SweetStrawberry4U@reddit (OP)
care to elaborate ?
zninjamonkey@reddit
A divorce lawyer isn’t going to handle transaction deals.
ategnatos@reddit
I know a personal injury lawyer who transitioned to defense attorney in murder trials with no prep work.
originalchronoguy@reddit
Specialization isn't the problem. The problem is complacency. Getting settled into your comfort zone that you no longer provide value.
Today, I had a very "tenured" engineer work on a project. He only specializes in a certain front end stack and he is good as what he does. The problem is the rest of the team has to pick up his slack and do everything for him. Juniors have to do the back-end based on his requirements. They are building a product and he doesn't contribute more. So juniors on the team have to learn all the new tech to support the app. Things like building out health checks and monitoring. High availability checks. If he can't lead the group to do it, a junior has to pick it up. That is lop-sided and unfair. And in my eyes, and not contributing so much.
Meanwhile, I was demoing my projects with his engineering manager. "Yeah, we have all these observability in place. DR (Disaster Recovery) was just finished and tested. The team did all the load testing and all the deployment." And the EM asked, "with just 3 guys? and turns his head to look at his team of 12 guys in a state of disarray."
wwww4all@reddit
No.
There are other tech stack you can learn, practice in your career. Some may work out, some may not.
You can't get "pigeon-holed" unless you pigeon-hole yourself.
Follow the phrase, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. There are other tech stacks, get on it and git gud.
zagajaw@reddit
The red pill
AutomaticSLC@reddit
Maybe if you specialize in a dying technology and refuse to adapt with the industry.
In most companies, having deeply specialized experience with the tools they're using is a big bonus.
What are you even talking about?
Empty_Geologist9645@reddit
Not necessarily. You have to take risks to avoid it. People got let go because of the bets that didn’t work out. But they ended up better off. Everyone push for optimal solution and solving business case, but ICs should worry about themselves, consider benefits for them as well.