It would rarely be effective to market yourself as a generalist on paper.

If you have 3 primary skill sets you should have 3 focused resumes.

If you want a position that requires a generalist, the only/best fit would be founder. In almost all other circumstances, companies hire for a problem and not general optimizations. Even if they need a generalist.

I would posit that you have a marketing problem and not a skills mismatch problem. The noise to signal ratio on your resume may be making it seem to not match any position.

Thanks for your insight. It really resonates with me.

I think you're very right about my marketing problem :)

On the surface, my website is kinda out there. I built it from the ground up using Rake and some gems as a static site generator. I think it's very cool, and I don't expect that many people will appreciate it, but I'm hoping that one day someone comes along and says "wow, that's pretty cool, wanna help us with this Ruby thing?")

In a deeper way, this whole discussion is very helpful... it's giving me a fresh perspective on how to frame conversations with future potential employers.

And actually the other day I had an epiphany about my marketing. Sure, I chose an odd path, but I've already done so much of the work! I just need to get my random little open source tools in decent, usable shape so that people who'd find them useful might actually get a chance to use them. I need to get my half done work finished and make tutorials about it and get myself out there.

This came after I got a call from a contracting company who told me they were bidding on an interesting job that might be a good fit for me... I was so excited that I stayed up all night and finished like three old random projects at the same time, just so I could put more stuff on my portfolio. It was a wakeup call, affirming that there actually just might be some cool work out there after all... so get your shit together!

This is an interesting idea that I'll have to try.

I have the 3 primary skillset problem you describe and have a decade of "founder" experience. I thought the breadth of experience and technologies would be impressive, but I think it just confuses most employers. It seems counter-intuitive to intentionally not mention your skills on your resume, and admittedly a little ego-deflating.. but this actually makes sense.

I just thought of something else: it might be a good idea to go around and make a collection of all the different job titles that broad-knowledge people (e.g. "technical artist", "full stack") are given in different industries, and find the ones that fit you. Then study the roles. That way you'll have a language for looking for jobs and will have a better idea of where you might fit in and how to have conversations about it.

Your assertion about generalist ~= founder is pretty spot on. I've spent decades working lots of different job titles that interest me (or as the needs of the organization dictated). Putting all that down on my resume hasn't helped me much.

I was heading the direction of very focused resumes. I've also landed a low pressure founder role too, so that's nice.

A team lead position on a team that has autonomy is also a good place to be as a generalist. It's where I see myself providing the most value to my company. I've had some opportunities to move up to Director+ but blegh.

If you've worked in the different specialties at different jobs (rather than interleaving all 3), won't focused resumes have glaring temporal holes in them?

The idea is not to omit experience, but spend more real estate on the focus topic. Writing a longer description for the experience that really matches the description, and even wording less relevant experience to so that it sounds more relevant.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies.

I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track. I need to be an X or a Y or a Z. I can't adopt those roles when necessary--I need to be slotted in and just go.

That doesn't really work for me. Which is a major reason why I'm a software consultant now. I'd go do a full-time job that respected my complete disinterest in being pegged to a particular role and was able to give me the latitude to solve cross-cutting problems at scale. But that's a hard role to define, a hard role to hire for, and a hard role to evaluate--which is why they, and other generalist-focused roles, don't often exist.

It's easy to get a job. I can walk into almost anywhere in Boston if they're hiring and get an offer; I interview extremely well. I can't get a job that actually leverages my skills.

Assembly lines beat generalists. As companies grow they can exploit this to gain increasing efficiency with minimal effort. So, either work for small companies, or be the front line manager who picks up whatever slack is missing to keep things on track.

Try consulting or entrepreneurship.

When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need.

When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.

You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do.

I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.

Same here, I work independently for a few years now and it just becomes less interesting, and for interesting problems where you'd learn something new (I.e. where you are not good but you know you'd get there quickly) you cannot maintain your rate.

I keep wondering if I should take the rate cut for a year or just study mathematics at the local university (which is free here) ...

Genuinely curious: how would studying maths solve your specialist/generalist dilemma?

Math is multidisciplinary like none other. You could use graph theory, for example, to study relationships in music, sociology, chemical reactions, transportation systems, markets, ecosystems, whatever. And the insight you gain in applying it from one angle will almost certainly provide a fresh light when you pivot back to a different application.

Having a math PhD could also help cut through the bs of people thinking you're not useful because you're a generalist. Suddenly, they'd be asking you to help them with weird little problems. Which is what I'm pretty good at like to do!

I've thought about going to study math too.

Are clients are hiring you as a team of one? If so, it’s easy to see you as replaceable. If you assemble a team then you get to work on more interesting and longer-term projects.

Either you fit yourself into the structure of someone else’s business, or you’re in business. If you’re in business, there’s no lack of diversity in what you spend your time doing. That’s what I mean by entrepreneurship, not “SV startup entrepreneurship”.

You know, that's a good point. When I consult through some of our locals it's very much a team-of-one sort of thing because we're probably too expensive to rope together too many people onto one project. (Not that we're actually that expensive, but false economies around expertise exist throughout tech.)

Something to think about. Thank you.

Sheesh, get over yourself. I'm not trying to be a jerk but this is such an obnoxiously braggy complaint.

Yes, companies have complex problems to solve, that require more than a few days or weeks of work at a time. If you want to just wake up every day and decide that you need to work on a totally new project, you're not going to be very useful.

Lots of people have a wide range of interests, but you pick one of the many areas that seems interesting and that you can contribute to, and you work on that for a while and try to make a difference. "Adopting a role when necessary" is not that different from slotting in to a team, since you can often change teams every few months if you want to, or even work across teams.

What you describe is a hard role to define and hire for, but it's a role that many engineers create for themselves by being both great problem solvers and willing to do what is most valuable for the company. Consider that maybe you haven't gone in with the right mindset to make it happen for yourself.

You've heard of "be a multiplier, not an adder", right? My contention is that many good developers can be multipliers across very large portions of an engineering organization when given the chance. Dysfunction does seem to be the natural state of any business, and engineering groups are no exception; technical and social resources capable of and empowered to tackle cross-cutting concerns are that chance I'm describing and provide self-evident benefits over the long term. You're right, that sometimes it happens informally. I am asserting that institutionalizing it makes teams faster, less risky, and happier.

I also happen to think that I'd be good at it, because it's kind of what I already do, and I wish it was more common because that'd be great. Heaven forfend. I mean, you can try to pull the well-actually-it's-labor-that's-bad thing by trying to turn it into my mindset is wrong rather than let's talk about executive and managerial allocation of resources and whether we do a good job of it across the board, but the thing speaks for itself.

And you're right, that post is braggy. It's also marketing: from this thread I've gotten two emails inquiring as to the state of my pipeline and if I'd have time for a chat. It can be both self-marketing and a reasonable observation of reality. (Email's in my profile.)

I have not heard of 'be a multiplier, not an adder' Can you elaborate?

Be one that makes changes that make a team perform 2x - 10x - Nx better, not someone who adds a constant contribution to the team.

> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations.

I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need).

Looking for a new job is a pain. Companies don't explicitly hire for it, politics can come into play if the generalist doesn't know how to dance around the company in a way that doesn't threaten others' fiefdoms, there's no easy way to suss out competence from arrogance during an interview, no manager wants to frontload your salary on their budget when they won't be getting the full benefit of it, and a host of other things.

Generalists are valuable to a company, holistically. They're oil to the machine and fit in between all the specialized cogs to smooth things out and let you run the engine hotter without breaking down. But managers only manage their own cogs, hiring only looks for the cogs they're told to find, and at the end of the day whether there's oil in the machine is Someone Else's Problem. Very few teams exist which have the prerogative and budget to hire for that holistic need, so most companies just go without oil and don't think about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

> "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need)."

Your job and experience sound very similar to my current role. I don't have an accurate job title anymore, and I very much see myself as the oil that makes the engine of the company run more smoothly. I wear about four or five different hats, all depending on what fires I need to put out. Good to meet someone doing something similar.

I've said this in a sibling thread, but most shops I've seen that doesn't have This Guy are worse-run, less friendly, and higher business-risk shops. (Which isn't to say that counterexamples don't exist, but I can't think of a good one in my experience. The best companies institutionalize the role.)

Part of the reason my job needs to exist is to address lack of adequate staffing levels and dysfunctional inter-departmental practices. I would say the company I work for is transitioning between one that is haphazardly run to one that is more professional, but that transition doesn't happen overnight, and you need people to pick up the slack during that transition.

Very true. From what I've observed, it's because a firm with This Guy allows that role to absorb all the odds and ends that pop up and need handled, while allowing specialists to focus on what they do best, maximizing their work output and general work satisfaction.

A firm without This Guy means that more small problems/needs get ignored since it doesn't clearly fall into anyone's scope of work or warrant the cost associated with the specialist. And if it gets large enough to not ignore, a specialist will consistently have to context shift to something outside of their specialty when something tangentially related pops up. This decreases their productivity considerably, decreases their satisfaction as they can't focus on what they truly enjoy doing, and increases business risk as things get overcomplicated or slip through due to a more biased view on the strategy to perform the work (based on whatever the individuals specialty is).

How did you get into a role like that? Sounds like something that would be fun.

It is fun. As for how I got into it, I got hired for a different role (test engineer), proved myself in this role but also took on extra responsibilities outside my remit (I should note that I also had worked in various different technical roles in previous jobs). An opportunity came up to be a founding member of a new Business Analyst team and I took it, but because of the structure of the company I'm in I didn't leave the IT Development team fully, so now I sit somewhere between them. In the space of a week I can be doing data analysis, business analysis, software testing, software development and user training. The hours are long, but I'm seeing improvements in the business culture gradually coming in as a result of this work, which is satisfying.

> most companies just go without oil and don't think about it

Practice-wise, it astounds me how many people/institutions expect different results from everyone else while hewing to the same practices as everyone else. Why do you think you'll be the exception? Why can't you look at the reality of what is working and what isn't?

This applies to so many areas of life, but it is extremely pronounced in business, where everyone cargo cults every little practice of AmaGooFaceSoft and believes that is what made them who they are. It's like there's an extreme deficit of original thought.

A lot of comapanies have "A" teams they send in when necessary. The US Digital Service was one example of this.

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them.

Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply.

The hard part is giving in to a job. I think my hesitancy in this area straight up reeks to the point H.R. people/recruiters can pretty much smell it. It's just not about the money for me. If I was doing something I enjoyed and had time to work on creative projects (a.k.a. "my life's work"), I'd be fine on ~ $1000/mo (say at ~20-40 hrs/mo). But this presents difficult hiring/management challenges, the main one being the challenge of using my time effectively. When someone is always on call, management doesn't have to worry about this as much.

Honestly, I think companies could get a lot more bang for their buck if they put more money into hiring people to maintain and improve on open source projects that they use. And I know that there are jobs like this out there. I just need to keep looking for one that fits me :)

The idea of failing at "giving in to a job" resonates so much with me. Thanks for taking the time to formulate this thought into words.

You think you're too good for a job, hence, you are unemployed.

I went through my entire 20s thinking this, and I have strong opinions about it so sorry for this long post...

Back when I quit my 9-5 job in 2006 my favorite quote was by the creator of Winamp... "For me, coding is a form of self-expression. The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have. This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leave."

No company deserved me because I was a creative innovator, and even though working retail for $10/hr wasn't using my CS degree, I'd rather do that than make $70k getting someone else rich. I thought I deserved $250k since I was obviously going to get them rich - so taking the $10/hr job doing mindless work was less of a sell-out.

The next 8 years I tried a lot of things, and went $20k in debt. When I reached my 30s, I realized a few things:

1. You can be a mercenary and get the skills you need for your own business while working for someone else. You learn and get faster while doing tasks for your employer, so even though the code you wrote is owned by them... the code you write for your own business will be better and done faster.

2. If you're worried about getting them rich... just do what they say instead of innovating. Most companies don't innovate, they just maintain the status-quo and have you build systems that meet existing needs and save a little bit of money. You aren't making the next Snapchat at a 9-5... and if you are, you should have equity.

3. Freedom is not just about having the time to do things.... I had all the time in the world in my twenties but no money. Being broke basically put me in a prison. I couldn't go on trips with friends, couldn't take girls out, couldn't do what I wanted because I'd have no money for it. Now that I have a full-time job and work on side projects, I have the opposite problem where I have money but no time.

Overall I think having a 9-5 job works better for my lifestyle. Maybe I just needed more discipline and I could have succeeded as an Indie developer making games, marketing software, apps... and whatever other shiny thing caught my eye... but now I do that stuff on the side. I still hope I succeed as an entrepreneur and reach a point where I have complete freedom (time & money)... but now that I'm older I realize that was always a long-shot.

There's nothing wrong with making people rich in exchange for money they give you. That's how jobs work. Making someone else rich is something to be proud of and aspire to. Not as cool as making yourself rich, but still good.

I don't mind if my boss or the CEO of the company gets rich, I think they're good guys. I'm just worried they would sell out instead of keeping the company private.

Take Tumblr for example - they sold to Yahoo. Verizon bought Yahoo. If I was an engineer at Tumblr I'd be pissed that an evil monopoly like Verizon that's fighting against net neutrality is suddenly using my code.

I'm more humble now than I was in my 20s, and I don't think my code is anything special, but I still fear that the private company I work for will sell everything I built to someone I consider evil. If I have no control and no equity I'm going to act like a mercenary... I'll do the job efficiently and according to specifications, but they don't get anything extra. If they have an idea and have me build something that gets them rich that's great - but I'm not going to be like the guy who built GMail on the side at Google... I just do the job they tell me.

You're afraid the code you write for an employer might be used by an evil company. We could apply the same argument to taxes. The taxes you pay may help fund actions that you believe are morally reprehensible. To a large extent, these things are beyond your control, and by overanalyzing you're simply limiting yourself.

So what I am saying is at this point, do not worry about all these things. Keep up the side-projects, and if you do that over the long-term, you may one day find yourself in a situation where you have the freedom to dedicate your efforts to what you find meaningful.

> Take Tumblr for example - they sold to Yahoo. Verizon bought Yahoo. If I was an engineer at Tumblr I'd be pissed that an evil monopoly like Verizon that's fighting against net neutrality is suddenly using my code.

But wouldn't you be happy that all your fellow coworkers also probably got to benefit from the sale? If you or your coworkers got rich enough then you could all just focus on doing things that you think matter or better the world!

I don't think that at all. I actually admire and respect people who are able to buckle down and focus on a full time job. I also acknowledge and respect that this is not a fit for me. There's nothing wrong with me or with people who that works for, and this is my challenge. Please don't interpret my frustration as a condemnation of traditional employees/employers. I'm learning how to navigate.

WHere did you get that from? Does this not seem like a really rude thing to say to you? Do you not value the well being of others?

you think there is stigma in being unemployed.

A salaried job that only gives you 5-10hrs/week is a niche unto itself.

Your absolutely right, and not even salary jobs, just part time jobs:

https://tech.mn/jobs/?q=&type=1&role=0&cat=any

vs.

https://tech.mn/jobs/?q=&type=2&role=0&cat=any

Another way to see the statements as non-contradictory is: since companies cannot hire people like this, they structure themselves such that such people are not required. Then, when one does happen along, the company has no place for him.

Or her.

> Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

Yeah, thats part of the pattern. Generalists often do not appear as professional as specialists (which does not mean that everybody who looks unprofessional is a generalist).

Right. And believe me, I'm not the pinnacle of professionalism, but I have core values of respect and a motivation to do work that people find valuable. Last time I checked they are pretty well intact. I believe this person mistook specialism and accolades for professionalism.

I think there's a difference of terms. Wanting to work 20-40 hours a month on stuff you like instead of "giving into a job" sounds pretty far from what most people are going to consider "a professional" (you work on what the job needs at the present, with standard hours, that they pay for).

This explains why everyone in tech fights over space on the latest bandwagon every time no matter how astoundingly mediocre the latest thing is.

It's strange, but I think at least some companies find it hard to staff positions, while also at the same time ignoring/rejecting suitable candidates.

Case in point - I'm a generalist who can very credibly claim very significant expertise at two disconnected areas (compilers and distributed systems), plus some startup/ product management expertise. I saw a job listing here for a startup that needed both of these and claimed they're looking for remote work - so, even though I'm not actively looking for a job, I wrote them; the match between my skills and their needs seemed too good to be true.

They wrote back the standard rejection mail - didn't even try to talk to me. I thought that maybe they found someone else, but no, they still advertise the position. I know it sounds arrogant, but there's no chance in hell they can find many better candidates (I doubt that they can find even one, but well, good luck).

Are their recruiters uniquely ignorant? Unlikely. I think many companies do a lousy effort on recruiting, and then wonder why they can't fill the positions. One of the reasons "internal referrals" work so well is that the candidates are at least seriously considered.

I would bet my lunch that your scenario was a keyword mismatch. Always keep in mind that the "hiring person" at startups is usually the non-technical person. So you have to get past the skills list provided by the CTO/CIO/Lead Dev.

I have seen three approaches to limit this. First being to stay super field specific but implementation general, but not keyword void. Second, is to go super rabbit hole on every keyword/tool/language/platform you have ever worked with inside the field.

The third approach is to have a type one resume with a type two cover letter. That approach has usually been the most consistent for callbacks in my circles, and allows for your rabbit hole to be of the same type as the job description.

You might be right (though there may be other explanations, e.g. ageism or just wanting local employees, and writing "remote" just for the heck of it, "to get more leads"). But even if you're right, that just reinforces my point: I'm not desperate to get a job; I wrote to have a discussion, because they managed to pique my interest... I didn't put any kind of effort to "market" myself, thought they'll figure things out in the interview(s). They were basically fortunate that their advertising hit he right target. And what did they do with that lead that they got? They throw it away through a non-technical filter....

I think that’s an interesting cross section. I’ll talk to you. Email in profile.

These kind of job listings may just be used as a cheap form of advertising to show investors and (potential) stakeholders that the company is growing and - therefore - doing well.

Companies sometimes aren't honest about their job postings asking too much, and instead blame the worker population on not having the skills they need.

The more skills you are trying to get filled for one position, the less likely a candidate will match all of those skills.

Take any job posting with 20-30 lines of skills or requirements and it's really no wonder they can't find someone that meets all or even half of that.

I’ve definitely seen postings around asking for 4+ years experience in React or something equally ridiculous (React has existed for 4 years).

I think that hiring practices haven’t really caught up to pace of reality yet. Nobody does the same thing for more than 5 years anymore, even if you’ve been at a company that long what you’re doing today does not look like what you were doing then. The chance that a new hire already knows all the parts of your stack is basically zero. What you want is someone who soaks up frameworks like a sponge.

Not to mention the companies that specifically write the ads so that they can claim their person doesn't exist and bring in an H1-B holder for half the rate. The fact that these shysters ruined it for the companies that actually need good people at good pay is a major problem.

There is a massive gulf between hiring and work. There's another massive gulf between what a manager asks for and what HR or recruiters ask for.

> "If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions"

The process of hiring for this is hard. Finding people like this is also hard.

There's also gulf a between what companies think they need, and what they actually need. Almost everyone hires on technologies and not the abstract skillsets required to learn said technologies.

Any Idea how to find a company that hires on that abstract skillset, potentially by throwing one into cold water to test for it?

~Someone with little resume-driven experience but good grogging skills

Honestly, the way I got hired recently was by just reading job postings and cramming on the frameworks mentioned in them until I was competent enough to pass an interview/coding challenge. I’m a little peeved that it was essentially company training on my dime, and you have to count on companies not refusing to hire unless you have x years, but it did get me hired.

Big companies understand this and that's reflected in their hiring practices. They don't care what skills you have, just that you're smart.

The way they throw you into cold water is using whiteboard interviews. So if you don't like those... sorry.

No, I wish. The closest you'll get is companies that might hire on transferrable skillsets (e.g., Ruby <-> Python). The best thing you can do is have a portfolio of work that shows your understanding. It's what we had to do when I was doing graphic design and illustration work.

I got found by a ~10ppl YC company and the deal fell apart over $12K.

exactly! and even if you do find them, convincing them to work for you is also hard... lots of these people are don't respond to money in predictable ways.

Companies find it hard to staff generalist positions because they don't know how to interview/hire generalists. If a generalist interviews with a team that has several specialists then one of specialists can easily knock down the hire decision because the candidate isn't _as_good_as_ the specialist.

Something being hard does not imply it's expensive. There are many ways hiring some kind of people can be hard even with a massive amount of them out of your door looking for a job.

One of Marx' theories was that people are estranged from their labour by making it a purely economic entity. To me that's exactly the reason behind the reactions in this thread (and also why I feel the same).

I'm a fellow generalist. I got lucky that the company I'm with values my work, but I can see something that isn't said out loud about generalists but appears to be true (in my experience at least)... generalists are harder to manage.

If you've got someone who is largely autonomous and can wear multiple hats, steering them in a single direction may be more tricky than a specialist that doesn't seek work outside their remit.

>But today I was told straight up that my resume wasn't conventional enough, that it was too well-rounded. After quite a few messages back and forth, I'm not even sure if they even looked at my portfolio. They told me there was no money for me, because their funders were looking for someone more professional.

Assuming your skillset is good, run, don't walk, away from those idiots.

Some resources you may find of interest:

* "Have Fun at Work" by William L. Livingston -- Livingston provide examples of how organizations are often incapable of hiring the people who might help them most.

* "The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet" by Mickey Z. -- This book is more in the category of seeing how bad so many creative people have it (until perhaps we get a basic income some day, Star Trek replicators for subsistence, a gift economy, and/or better government planning).

* "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Dan Pink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab...

* "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/

* "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black (which reflects your point in another comment on "giving in to a job"): https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.or... "Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."

Contrast with notions of "full employment". Or, sadly, also most of what Silicon Valley is up to these days...

About a decade ago, I sent that last link to an Apple recruiter who contacted me -- never heard back. :-) Not that I am a "Steve Jobs" or would want to be one, but, as with Livingston's point, would Apple hire a Steve Jobs as an employee? Almost certainly not. See: http://careerfuel.net/2013/06/if-apple-wouldnt-hire-steve-jo...

Though for balance, on the value of working together with others even in difficult circumstances, see "Buddhist Economics" by E.F. Schumacher: http://www.centerforneweconomics.org/buddhist-economics "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

I've collected some more ideas on making workplaces better here: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations...

From what you describe, if you can't find a direct match to what you would like to do, you may want to consider being frugal and then earning what money you need to live in a low-stress part-time occupation with the rest of your time then available for what you really want to do. Have you ever considered, say, cleaning carpets to make ends meet? https://web.archive.org/web/20030807105050/http://www.unconv... "More than a few people agree the best career would be one which provides challenge, intellectual stimulation, and rewards for quality work. Many however, would be surprised to discover they can have all of those benefits and more in some of the unlikeliest of careers. Case in point: I'm a professional carpet cleaner. Some people think this is a second-rate career. I don't agree with them. Carpet cleaning gives me challenges, intellectual stimulation, and many other rewards. To prove this, permit me to walk you through one of my work days. ..."

If instead you focus on "selling [yourself] to contract shops", you may find this book Aaron Erickson useful: "The Nomadic Developer: Surviving and Thriving in the World of Technology Consulting".

This is great, than you! And yes, I'm pretty much doing this now. I live with musicians who hustle very hard. I'm a musician too. I'm familiar with the life. I'm very happy and fulfilled in so many ways, just exhausted.

I think one of my best bets right now is to lean hard into teaching, especially piano teaching. I have one committed student and a few more excited but broke students who take lessons from time to time. Is very rewarding and there is lots of mutual respect.

I'm not sure what he meant by "modal employee". Is it in the statistical sense of occuring most frequently?

Looking at it, I think he means the statistical middle employee.

I thought it was a typo for "model employee", but your interpretation makes more sense.

I think that's exactly what he meant.

many people can have skills to do x but if I cant rely on you to do that for me for the next year at a high quality then I dont want to take the risk.

You are not just a good frontend engineer you are a good frontend engineer that is competing with other good frontend engineers. You lack professionalism (it sounds like) so you lose against those guys.

Good luck, at some point you either find the place that works for you or you learn expand your skills. Seems like you need to improve your tolerence for down time. It could be worse

I don't lack professionalism because I'm unable/unwilling to provide the same level of support that full time specialists/shops offer. I'm just not a fit for jobs where that's what needed. Maybe that makes me less of a specialist, but it doesn't make me inherently unprofessional. And a lot of times that's not what's needed! As an artist I'll tell you that in art worlds there are plenty of professional jobs where you do something well and walk away... There are others who are better suited to taking what you've built and integrating it over a longer term, particularly, it's people who have stake in the project.

Have you ever done freelance web stuff for small businesses? There are some people who want you to be their webmaster... You give them a CMS and they want you to go fix their typos. So you say "Okay, sure, but it'll be $50/hr" and then they get frustrated because they don't have someone doing that kind of work on their end. They think it's your job to "make their website", but don't want to take ownership of the thing.

This is an analogy for the kind of thing I'm taking about. I want to help solve problems, and I want to provide value for my employers, but I'm unwilling mindlessly give up my time to people who don't value it outside of their myopic needs. A lot of times, that's what's expected to be "a professional". Well I don't want that. I'd rather be an amateur who's also a respectful and savvy business partner, who's definitely interested in helping you with your project but also keeps healthy boundaries for myself.

I'm definitely more of "an amateur" (lover of) than a professional, but I don't see why that should make me automatically "unprofessional" in my business relationships. On the contrary, I think it's fully possible to "be professional" without providing unrelenting 40+ hr/week service for a year. If that's not what you're looking for then with all due respect that's fine! But please don't blanket assume I'm "less professional".