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Opinion about full-stack web app teams? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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What is your opinion about full-stack teams? I'm referring to teams where the desire is for every member to competently contribute at every point in the stack.

Do they work?
What has been your experience?
Does team size and/or experience level inform your opinion?
Do you notice an increase/decrease in quality?
Do you notice an increase/decrease in team and product cohesion?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's fine for the usual straightforward and easy problems -- problems that common developer tools and paradigms have solved. Like a product that reduces to CRUD with a few boolean expressions, joins, and simple algebra mixed in. But I think it's inefficient maybe even unworkable for harder problems. And hard can be scale, like moving up two orders of magnitude in throughput or entities, or down in latency. Or hard can be algorithmic stuff.

I highly agree with what others have said here, that a culture of "fungible engineers" can alienate those who want to go deep. Some folks enjoy being subject matter experts or are drawn to a craftsmanship aesthetic. And, IMHO, a healthy org culture should work for all kinds of people -- specialists and generalists. I think you should aim for and encourage people to grow to be T shaped rather than fungible cogs.