Comments on: Scaling lessons from Google’s CIO

By: Frank Pasquale

Frank Pasquale — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:19:23 +0000

“The Industrial Age, when specialization ruled, is over” http://t.co/gwQNlaZf

By: Frank Pasquale

Frank Pasquale — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 01:29:21 +0000

RT @timohannay: Scaling lessons from Google’s CIO. Hire generalists, not specialists: http://t.co/Xdnx6mw5 (HT @spanx)

By: Hilary Spencer

Hilary Spencer — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:54:54 +0000

RT @timohannay: Scaling lessons from Google’s CIO. Hire generalists, not specialists: http://t.co/Xdnx6mw5 (HT @spanx)

By: Shan Rahulan

Shan Rahulan — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:12:56 +0000

Disaster porn and the webscale age. A change of thinking required? http://t.co/gNPAP9LD #IN

By: Nick Carrier

Nick Carrier — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:11:30 +0000

Scaling lessons from Google’s CIO http://t.co/5TTrZ7bt

By: Eddie

Eddie — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:27:12 +0000

Stacey, this is a great article, you are truly one of the best journalists in this business and you often discover very useful and pertinent nuggets of things to think about. Thank you for your great efforts at Gigaom! btw, this quote excerpted:

> … realization that when you are building at scale, you are at the edge of
> the known world.

This makes me think of Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan concept construed mostly onto the financial community (unknown unknowns)!

By: Max

Max — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:44:30 +0000

excellent article

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:26:14 +0000

most companies don’t want to let one developer know the whole system. it’s some kind of intellectual protection of the company..

By: Sanjer

Sanjer — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:30:31 +0000

Technology is becoming easier day by day in relation to programming. If all the team members share their thoughts at regular intervals during the development surely the outcome will be a humanized solution. This would help many minds pick many minds, understand different behavioural patterns from the developers from the end-user perpspective and match the end-user expectations.

In today’s ever changing,new frameworks’ era, I believe the intelligent person is the one who knows where the information IS not the one who knows it. Generalist are the ones who are specialispts and know where the others know information IS.

By: walkingthepattern

walkingthepattern — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:55:09 +0000

Are we talking about generalization in relation to the development and workings of any given system, or generalization in terms of skill sets, i.e. a Jack of all trades?

If it’s the former, I’m all for the idea of developers keeping a broader understanding of projects with which they’re involved. Otherwise, you wind up with a low bus factor, and possibly even a production line-type environment where everyone has an area of the project that they know best. Neither case is desirable, and having developers that understand how the whole system works is one way to solve the problem.

If it’s the latter, remember how the phrase goes: Jack of all trades, master of none. Generalization regarding skill sets is good to a certain degree, and developers having to adapt with technology as it changes is nothing new. But trying to keep up with every new language, framework, and development methodology can lead to slow-moving projects. People have to specialize sometimes because when time is invested in learning every new technology, the depth of that knowledge can suffer.