 Hi, my name is Ellie Chang. The spelling is a little confusing. I do admire when people just go for it, but it is pronounced Ellie. And today, I'm here to talk about the glorification of generalization in tech. So glorification of generalization, it sounds like I might be saying that being a generalist is bad, but that is not at all what I'm saying. I think there's a place for generalists, there's a place for specialists, or a mix in the workplace. Do whatever, do whatever works for you. But what I'm not so much a fan of is glorifying generalization, because what you're saying in this case is, this is the way to work. Every other way of working is inferior, and that I'm not so much down with. So ultimately, today's talk is about perspective, having some perspective about trends in our industry. Now, generalists have been around for a really long time. You've probably heard of the Jack of All Trades, and trades there is the important part, because the Jack of All Trades does more than one line of work, and maybe isn't particularly a standout in any of those lines of work, but does multiple lines of work anyway. More recently, we've had something called the T-shaped professional, so-called because they have one particular specialization that they spend a lot of years diving into, and becoming an expert in, and then after they master one specialization, they go and branch out across the org, and learn about other departments, and those areas of knowledge for them are a little shallower, and that's the top of the T. This year, we have something that's called the full-stack employee. Not to be confused with full-stack engineer, which is just focused on coding, or full-stack designer, or full-stack marketer. The full-stack employee is a term coined by Chris Messina, and it's the ultimate generalist, the generalist-generalist. They're not limited to one line of work, two lines of work, three lines of work. There's really no limit to how many lines of work they're in, and the full-stack employee does everything from marketing, data analysis, engineering, design, you name it, they've got it covered, but they're not just limited to their skills. As Chris describes it in the article he wrote, full-stack employees have an insatiable appetite for new ideas, best practices, and ways to be more productive and happy. They're curious about the world, what makes it work, and how to make their mark on it. It's this aspect above others that defines and separates the full-stack employee from previous generations. So you've got someone's skills, and then apparently you've got characteristics which ranks above their skills. Chris also goes on to say, being a full-stack employee isn't necessarily easier or harder, it's different. With always-on connectedness via their mobile devices, the boundaries between work and non-work blur, creating an implicit expectation that there's never a time too late for a Slack chat or Google Hangout. So there's skills, characteristics, and now you're throwing lifestyle into the mix. And you might be wondering, well, what's the big deal if someone just wrote an article? But this guy isn't a nobody, he's in Silicon Valley, he's the inventor of the hashtag. He's also a well-known open source advocate, and long before he wrote this article that became insanely popular, people were already in the tech industry thinking about full-stack. They just didn't have maybe the vocabulary for it. So when this article came out, people loved it. I mean, people who identified as full-stack, employers who want to hire full-stack people, and apparently universities who are teaching people to be more diverse in their MBAs. But who doesn't this idea benefit? Who doesn't necessarily fit into the box of knowing how to do everything, wanting to do everything, and having the time to do everything? Well, probably a lot of us. And in general, that's a good thing, but when this idea gets popular, then we all look bad in comparison. So then the full-stack idealization is really problematic. And let's talk about how specifically how this idea is changing things in the workplace. How does it change hiring, for example? Before, we would talk about skills. Someone would look at your resume, think about what skills you have versus what skills the company needs. But now, you don't have to get specific about skills at all because full-stack employees are expected to have all the skills or be able to learn them right away. So instead, we're just getting specific about the type of person you are. So really, we're not even pretending it's a meritocracy anymore. It's not about your work. And it's not really even culture fit because they're not looking at your values or how well you get along with the team. They're looking at how much do you think and behave in this very specific way that was described earlier. And when you throw in stuff like working all the time, that's not a culture thing. That's just a really stringent restriction to put on people. So it's not really that great when you're looking for a job. What about career development, though? What if you're in the job already? How does this change the conversation there or your day-to-day work? Well, whereas before, you might expect that the company will help pay for you to get better and better in your career. Now, with all the advocating that you learn things on your own time because you're just so insatiably curious about being more productive, the onus is on you, you, the individual, to front the cost and the time to develop yourself. And if you don't invest in yourself, why should the company? Were you really a true full-stack employee? And in terms of corporate mobility, you're not expected to conveniently focus on moving up anymore because you're supposed to focus on moving horizontally. You're looking to add more and more skills to your stack, so to speak. So promotions, that's not a thing you have to concentrate on. Some people do think, though, that being a generalist gets you on the path to becoming a manager. And that's a misunderstanding of what managers do. Managers aren't the people doing all the things of their team members. Managers have teams that they then coordinate to get something done by a deadline. So the most important thing about being a manager is being able to manage. Thank you. And really, the top skill you have to have as a manager as a good manager, you have to be able to manage. But as a manager, in general, the most important skill you have is knowing how to navigate the political hierarchy of your company, AKA getting the right people to like you. I mean, we've probably all had bad managers. They certainly didn't get there by their skills or anything other than hierarchy navigation. So this whole concept of the full-stack employee is taking all the power that employees have and saying, hey, companies, take more of that power. Employees get to be expected to work more and more and expect less and less in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of investment on the parts of employers. So what is it then that we're really promoting other than becoming a full-stack employee, of course? Well, we're saying that you should be an independent hero rather than a team player. You should be the person who does it all because you know it all. But the best and the highest performing teams aren't high performing because of individual success. Ultimately, how well a company does depends on the success of the team as a whole. And studies have shown that when you put people individually versus in teams, the people that are in the best teams are not necessarily the highest performing individuals. So it's really about being able to work together and being able to collaborate really effectively. And if you are in this mindset that you have to do everything yourself and you are not good at setting boundaries, what you're really doing is creating a recipe for yourself to burn out. Plus, this whole concept that you can even be a person that knows everything is pretty insulting. I mean, the name itself says full stack, but what they really mean is multi-stack because how is it possible that one person can know everything there is to know in a company? I mean, they're not advocating that you spend years and years studying each discipline and each line of work. No, they're advocating that you just like have a passing knowledge of the thing and so you can do it. And that's pretty insulting to specialists who do take the time to study their field. We're also promoting the idea that work is a virtue. So by virtue, I mean, virtues in life are courage, honesty, kindness. If you put work up there with them, what are you saying? You're saying if you're not working so much, working all the time mentally and physically, then you're failing as a person, morally. And that's a pretty gross kind of statement to say. Some of you will probably have seen Office Space and will be very familiar with the scene I'm about to describe. But for those of you who aren't familiar or just don't remember what's happening here, Jennifer Aniston is playing a waitress and in here, her boss is confronting her about the flare, the buttons that she's wearing and he goes, we need to talk about your flare. And she looks down and she says, I thought I was wearing 15. He goes, yes, Brian over there is wearing 37 pieces of flare. And she goes, I thought 15 was the requirement. He says, 15 is the minimum. Do you wanna be a person who only does the minimum? And so she says, well, so more than. And he just gives her a look and says, people come to Chachkis for the attitude. And so how that relates is that like the full stack employee, this guy is refusing to give explicit requirements or expectations of her, but he just wants her to just fully commit herself mentally to the job. And he wants to create this atmosphere in which she's competing with all the Bryans of the world both on and off the clock and constantly having flare offs about who can wear more. And that's just because for all the tech skills that you're getting, people are thinking that tech is work and work is life. But you know, all the skills that they're advocating that you have, marketing, designing, code, like it's relevant to one industry. I mean, it might be relevant to more than one industry, but primarily the tech industry. They're not advocating that you're learning printing skills or that you become a lumberjack. So your focus is actually really, really singular. And it's one thing to love your job and to work really hard. And it's another thing to not have anything outside your job. I mean, we weren't here, we weren't built as robots sent here with like one purpose. We're human beings. We're complex. We have other interests. And to really force us to restrict ourselves to one thing I think is pretty damaging. So this whole full stack employee and the whole glorification of generalization that's happening right now in our industry is a huge conflation of a bunch of ideas. One of the things is why is the focus on quantity and not quality? I mean, why is having more skills better? Why can't you just have one skill that you're really good at? And why is this set of traits unique to being a full stack employee? I mean, can you not be curious about the world outside of work? Can you not be curious about one line of work? Why do you have to be curious about everything? And why do you have to have an insatiable appetite for productivity as it relates to your employer as opposed to your life if you really want to be productive, wouldn't you want to get things done by a certain time rather than having the always on be part of your life? And why is the full stack employee even being defined by more than what they're doing? Like for all the descriptions that they're talking about that make a full stack employee, the companies are asking that it's about you being. You being their idealistic employee rather than what you're doing tangibly at work. And really what makes this career path the way to go? You can do a lot of different things. This isn't necessarily the highest paying career path. This isn't even necessarily the most interesting career path because we are all interested in different things as individuals. So why then do we keep pushing this idea that you should be a generalist in tech? Ultimately, you can be really successful in a lot of different shapes and forms, whether that's at work, outside of work, in tech, outside of tech. So rather than following the latest trend of what's popular right now, you can think about what's right for you as a person. What are you interested in? What do you like doing? What can you reasonably do and make money at and decide yourself what's the best path in work and life? Or in other words, do you? So my talk originally came from an article I wrote on Model View Culture in which I'm much more eloquent than I am today. If you wanna read it, there's a shorthand link to it. And now you should feel free to tweet at me as much as you like, good or bad things. And thank you very much.