I have about 14 years into my career as a web guy who can code (front to back), design killer UI and create, execute and grow business strategy.
What that being set! "being" a generalist is not for everyone.
There are some things to note:
1. Keeping up with all three is a LOT of work. Understanding the latest javascript libraries, deployment tech, UI tools and successful business models take a ton of time. I roughly spend 15-30 hrs a week trying new things our, designing or running spreadsheets not to mention the meetups and whatnot.
2. Every startup is looking for this person because they can enable so many parts of the success equation in one, self-contained shot. They add more value per square inch at critical phases of business growth that is a considerable asset. As a startup grows, this is personality turns into an optimal product lead, who can drive major decisions and participate in meaningful discussions with teams, investors and press.
3. Large corporations are not tuned to need or understand your services, unless you are accomplished in mid- to senior-level management positions.
4. You can visualize and eval business ideas quickly, then be able to communicate them to specialists with ease. I can't tell you the number of times being able to verbalized the need for a linked list or onHover whatever has made communcation easier with people who I bring to help me execute. This makes you a better implementer who is respected by counterparts and team members. Business folk quickly grasp CLV and burn margins when deciding to invest or advise.
4. You don't necessarily become an expert in everything. In fact, it's near impossible. I've had to focus of two or three major activities and fine tune my skills. This could mean I will be specializing in the future.
5. You don't get rest. The world is moving quickly, technology even faster. There are millions of able and hungry people willing to execute on their great ideas every single day. That means I have to keep moving or lose my flow. I can probably point to 7 or so ideas that were launched in the time I was evaluating the opportunity with 3 that have gone onto real growth.
I'm 21 years into my career myself, so the web is younger than my carrer. At this point, I do full stack development as well.
And... I think you are taking on more than you need to for the discussion at hand.
If you are an excellent JS programmer, you don't need to keep up on the latest libraries. You can code what you need yourself. Sure, maybe you do something from scratch that could have been done with a newer library, but the 10 hours you lose there is more than made up by not having to do those 15 hours a week keeping up.
Likewise on your other tech points. Constantly churning your toolkit doesn't speed you up. It slows you down. There is a balance to be found where you keep up "enough", but still focus the majority of your time on delivering work.
I choose to spend a day or so each month trying to keep up, then roll with what I know for a while.
Likewise with some of your other activities. Meetups and business models? They may help you be a consultant, but that is adding yet a 4th role to the topic at hand.
Many of your other points also apply more to a consultant than a heads-down designer/coder.
In general, it sounds like you are trying to be an even rarer breed. More power to ya, but it may be overkill for most people.
The design's not bad and avoids most developer designed pitfalls, but it's not great either. HTML wise you've resorted to nested divs, there's errant elements floating in the wrong place and there's also a bunch of commented out code in each html page, which imho is always a massive red flag for me programmer wise. You shouldn't have to comment out code if you're using a VCS.
Obviously this is from 2 years ago, do you have any examples that better show off your skills now?
I'm not trying to pick on you here, it's more that I am honestly interested to see some of your work.
Matt, neither my code nor design will ever match someone who specializes in these areas. So I feel you're kind of missing the point. I never claimed to be a great anything so I wouldn't go jumping to conclusions. I simply do a little of everything. Kudos to your HN detective skills, Cookbuk was a weekend project hacked together playing with CI. Full blast reviews of missing or nested DIVs are a waste of your time that could be better spent on your startup. If you're looking for UI help on your corp or other products (which could use a refresher), lets chat.
You did say you had killer UI skills. Checking someone's comments and profile takes like 10 seconds.
I pretty much check the source HTML of every startup or demo site I see on HN as a matter of professional advancement and to see what they're using. People sometimes put easter eggs in their HTML or headers too, so it's fun too! Or even better when they're not minifying their JS and leave stupid comments in.
You'd be surprised about how much someone's HTML can tell you about them.
What that being set! "being" a generalist is not for everyone.
There are some things to note:
1. Keeping up with all three is a LOT of work. Understanding the latest javascript libraries, deployment tech, UI tools and successful business models take a ton of time. I roughly spend 15-30 hrs a week trying new things our, designing or running spreadsheets not to mention the meetups and whatnot.
2. Every startup is looking for this person because they can enable so many parts of the success equation in one, self-contained shot. They add more value per square inch at critical phases of business growth that is a considerable asset. As a startup grows, this is personality turns into an optimal product lead, who can drive major decisions and participate in meaningful discussions with teams, investors and press.
3. Large corporations are not tuned to need or understand your services, unless you are accomplished in mid- to senior-level management positions.
4. You can visualize and eval business ideas quickly, then be able to communicate them to specialists with ease. I can't tell you the number of times being able to verbalized the need for a linked list or onHover whatever has made communcation easier with people who I bring to help me execute. This makes you a better implementer who is respected by counterparts and team members. Business folk quickly grasp CLV and burn margins when deciding to invest or advise.
4. You don't necessarily become an expert in everything. In fact, it's near impossible. I've had to focus of two or three major activities and fine tune my skills. This could mean I will be specializing in the future.
5. You don't get rest. The world is moving quickly, technology even faster. There are millions of able and hungry people willing to execute on their great ideas every single day. That means I have to keep moving or lose my flow. I can probably point to 7 or so ideas that were launched in the time I was evaluating the opportunity with 3 that have gone onto real growth.