3 Reasons to be a Full Stack Developer
Weighing out the pros and cons of being a full stack developer? Well, you’ve landed in a place where you’ll get an exhaustive list of the pros for sure. But what about the cons? Let’s address the elephant in the room – you might have heard that being a full stack developer might just turn you into a “jack of all trades and master of none”. A label that nobody would like to have! So, is it the reality or just a myth? Let’s find out:
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1. Generalize, and then specialize
Let’s say all you know today is that you want to become a software engineer. Which specialization – which one would earn you money? Which one would get you excited? Which one is your strong suit? You don’t have enough information to figure that out yet. Confused and uncertain, you pick the path of full stack web development because your senior gave you this advice. Now let’s bring out our crystal ball and look into your future – In the next 2 years or so, you will learn how things work on the front end, the back end, the database, the infrastructure. After 2 years of going through all these areas, you notice that database gives you nightmares. You would sell your kidney but not work on infrastructure. Back end makes you fall asleep faster than your school textbooks. But frontend – that’s something for you! Front end makes you feel excited, or it is simply the strongest skill in your full stack kit. At this point, you can take a decision to start specializing in front end technologies, after having tested all the waters – Bless the senior who gave you the advice.
The crystal ball just showed you that you were able to make a sound decision in your career after you decided to check out all that was available to you. You first generalized, then specialized.
So, the statement that “you need to spread across the entire stack” is incomplete. That’s just step 1. Step 2 is to use your full stack opportunity to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are. Step 3 is to pick up your strength and double down on it.
You will fall into the trap of the ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ if you view the full stack opportunity as the “last” thing that needs to be done to boost your career. It in fact is the “first” thing that can propel your career. Look at full stack as a journey, and not a destination. A journey where you get a chance to explore everything under the sun. Once you’ve explored enough, you will get a fair idea of what you want to do next. This would bring you in a better position for specializing in one trade. And that’s not the only perk you get. Don’t forget how far you’ve already come with your full stack skills – you know how applications work end to end now. The idea is to leverage your full stack skills and become more ‘T-shaped’ – you are fairly good at understanding how the entire application works, but you are an expert in this one area, the strength you decided to double down on. Just imagine how empowering it can be if you get this opportunity at the beginning of your career!
2. There's demand, and there's money
Math says that it is an excellent career choice – the demand for this profile has been on the rise. According to this report by LinkedIn, full stack developers are listed in the Top 10 emerging jobs in India. Hackerrank Developer Skills Report, 2020 says that full stack developers are the most in demand software developers. When there’s demand and not enough supply, you can be assured you’ll get a good salary. According to the salaries submitted to Indeed, the average salary for full stack developers in India is 7.5 LPA. The reason for high demand and money is that employers benefit immensely from the skill set of a full stack developer. If you wish to know why exactly employers go gaga over full stack developers, head over to this (link to previous post) post. In short, full stack developers make their business easy as they are cost effective, more reliable and more agile in comparison to hiring a separate professional for every layer of the application. Imagine how valuable that can be, especially in a startup environment.
3. Broaden your thinking
There’s one fact you need to know. Full stack developers = King of Cool. Why? You will become a reservoir of knowledge. You will have experience in working with all the layers of an application. That implies you are going to become a better problem solver. Your mind is going to expand and open drastically on how applications work. You will be able to understand the bigger picture. Now that’s an asset as it will let you provide better and reliable solutions. All this means that you will get a pretty strong foundation for the rest of your career to stand on. Whenever someone talks about reliability and credibility, no guesses on whose name is going to pop up 😉 Not to mention, your agility to jump from one technology to the next is going to make you flexible. A quick, adaptive learner like that is a sweetheart of every organization. Now how cool is that!
That’s the full list of pros as promised. You’re still thinking of the cons? Well, I have one for you – your friends are going to get pretty annoyed with you because you won’t be able to stop bragging about yourself! But if that isn’t a big problem for you, what are you thinking about? Jump right in and join the club of the cool!
Author: Simmipreet Kaur