Somehow I became a generalist software engineer with a diverse domain experience. I started career with C# and moved to Javascript and then to Java and now C++. I worked for healthcare, online entertainment, nuclear energy, e-commerce, and advertising industries. In this blog post I want to share some of the details of these experiences and conclude on whether being a generalist is better than being a niche engineer.

Technology Lens

The very first program I ever wrote was in QuickBasic in grade 6 (1999). The school computer I wrote this was only capable of running some version of DOS. Computers at university ran Windows and I learned to code in C/C++/C# + some more obscure languages (Prolog, Algol, Pascal). In my first job I wrote desktop and mobile solutions using MS technologies, mostly written in C# with WPF & WCF. My next gig was all about performant backend services with a mixed technology stack backing a multi-million user website. At my next job I found myself translating nuclear material accounting code from the 70/80s written in PL/I that ran on mainframe into Javascript or C#. Most engineers who wrote the original PL/I code either retired or died. This job taught me that I can love a dynamic programming language. Then I moved to work for Amazon, it was all about launching new business workflows and scaling it with Java services backed by AWS and ReactJS frontend. Now at Google I mainly write in C++, but from another perspective for me there was a big shift from working on products towards working on infrastructure that supports traffic for billions of users.

Domain Lens

Now I want to have a look at all of the same jobs but from a different perspective. The first projects I worked on were for healthcare providers. Honestly, I didn’t give myself much thought about the morbidity of the things, the fact that much of the software was for hospices didn’t bother me as I was operating on the level of tasks. It was only later when I was working on a mobile app for nurses to visit patients at their homes did I internalize what this all was for. Next job probably wasn’t that noble – it was in online entertainment, more specifically sports betting. I even had an account with a competitor and placed small bets on sport events to understand how they do things compared to us. Saving the world from making more atomic bombs? Yep – that was my next job, kind of. On the ground what I was doing was merely software for IAEA (UN) and its agents who went to nuclear facilities and collected nuclear material data, performed different checks and recorded them in the app for later analysis. I got a chance to visit a nuclear reactor and learn how it works. Next gig was about enabling small companies to sell more stuff at Amazon. This was about enabling an entire channel of dropshipping for the India marketplace: loading inventory into Amazon systems, processing customer orders, invoicing, etc. This allowed me to have a good view on how e-commerce works. These days I work on supporting online advertisement from inside by working on infrastructure and tooling that allows other engineers at Google to deliver solutions to show you relevant Ads. I know ads may sound like a bad thing, but the free internet exists thanks to ads. Ads pay for those transatlantic underwater internet cables and all the other things that power today’s internet.

Cultural Lens

All of the companies I worked for were very different culturally. First job was a very homogeneous environment, all of us were Ukrainians, fairly young and we worked for our American customers who on their side were also culturally similar among themselves. I think communication gaps existed due to time zone differences and English language skills on our side. Next job was maybe half Austrians and another half of East europeans. The product we worked on was our own so I think we cared about its success a lot. I am actually not sure if I fit into this environment culturally, but I thrived on the technical front and delivering results. At the same time this was when I made many new friends who remain friends until now and I even stayed at their home on my recent trip to Europe. The United Nations is definitely a culturally most unusual environment I had to work in, mainly because of the diversity of nationalities and backgrounds. Any day at the UN premises there were people from over 100 different countries, my team alone had people from all of the continents. Something that was a bit less diverse was age, as many of the people who work for the UN are accomplished individuals with some years behind their backs. This was the place of internalizing that not everybody has the same life views on it and it’s all ok. It was extremely fascinating to learn from my colleagues. I would say that on a macro level both Amazon and Google are culturally similar – we are ambitious technically savvy individuals striving to make an impact. Though on another level Amazon is a fast paced, high intensity, customer centric, and deadline driven company whereis Google is more mission driven, long-term oriented, with more emphasis on innovation.

Conclusion

I can probably wear many other lenses to look at my past experiences, such as, Impact, Scale, Learning, Personal Fulfillment, WLB, Collaboration, Communication, etc. But even with the 3 lenses above it is clear that the diversity of technologies, domains, and cultures pushed me to become a generalist software engineer. Arguably, this isn’t necessarily a good thing, being extremely deep into one technology and domain can land you a ludicrously high paying job. I saw people sticking around and climbing corporate ladder rapidly, something that I couldn’t do with all the switched I did, and at the same time I saw directors being laid off just because there is no need for their role any longer. In today’s economies of scale the winner takes all. If you are at the right place and time and win the game – it is all yours. On the other hand, if you are not that “winner”, adaptability gives you an advantage of switching when needed and grabbing at least some piece of the pie or, maybe, a chance to win another game next time. I don’t know what is right, the above was my journey and it continues. What are your thoughts on going broad vs deep in your software engineering career?