>we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations... it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore
So much this. When hiring in this field, people seem to expect candidates to know anything and everything software wise, yet reality is software is more complicated than it ever has been.
The problem isn't alone to this field however, it's fundamental to all fields and the progress of civilization. Discover or invent something new and suddenly everyone else is illiterate about it and must learn it. The build up of knowledge is so immense that we don't expect any one person to know all that there is to know in society, hence why people specialize in what they do. It's why doctors have areas of expertise (feet/skin/teeth/neurology etc), why engineers have areas of expertise (mechanical/electrical/nuclear), why doctors aren't expected to know what engineers know. Why physicists aren't expected to know everything that chemists know, etc...
The software field is just a rapid microcosm of this progressive knowledge problem as software is invented at rapid pace. Yet some reason people seem to expect potential candidates to know everything...
This will be a bit of a tangent, but I think that level of specialization in the medical field exists because their jobs are mission critical. You can kill someone if you don’t handle your part right. The advent of the fullstack developer as the norm is because most of us are not doing critical things.
Companies need to be honest about the reality of their product. You’re building a straight forward web app most of the time, you know? You might not need that Stanford CS grad. If companies feel the ‘need’ it, it’s just aggrandizement and a very bad trend for this industry.
So much this. When hiring in this field, people seem to expect candidates to know anything and everything software wise, yet reality is software is more complicated than it ever has been.
The problem isn't alone to this field however, it's fundamental to all fields and the progress of civilization. Discover or invent something new and suddenly everyone else is illiterate about it and must learn it. The build up of knowledge is so immense that we don't expect any one person to know all that there is to know in society, hence why people specialize in what they do. It's why doctors have areas of expertise (feet/skin/teeth/neurology etc), why engineers have areas of expertise (mechanical/electrical/nuclear), why doctors aren't expected to know what engineers know. Why physicists aren't expected to know everything that chemists know, etc...
The software field is just a rapid microcosm of this progressive knowledge problem as software is invented at rapid pace. Yet some reason people seem to expect potential candidates to know everything...
Additionally, IDK how many times I've found people using different lingo to describe the same thing in this field. It's like a bigger version of this: https://hbr.org/2018/07/what-to-do-when-each-department-uses...