The Day a Fullstack Engineer Saved My Project (and My Shoulder)

Moving out

Back in the day I was more about managing actual software development teams than writing stories about it. Some of these teams were great, some not. Today I'm gonna tell you about a great one.

We rented an awesome office. A big, spacious room with open structure. The building was right next to subway and several cheap chain restaurants. But, as it often happens, several months in a big corporation bought the whole floor where were working, so we had to move. Bad omen. The new one wasn't as big and well-lit, and the location wan't nearly as convenient. Down to the birds that didn't chirp as happily as before. Anyway, no one was happy with the news.

But being a good manager, I told everyone to cheer up. What's a good bonding activity when moving into a new place? Gotcha, arranging furniture. To set a good example, I started to move stuff myself. The guys quickly picked up on this and soon enough the new place started to glow.

The shoulder incident

There goes the bad omen. I didn't take into account that moving heavy stuff is not the best idea if you're a girl, so just as I have been moving the last cabinet – a particularly heavy one – I've felt an intense pain in my shoulder and let out a scream. I then said "Relax everybody, I'm fine!" and promptly passed out.

As I opened my eyes, I saw him – my guarding angel, my Cherubim – our Fullstack Engineer. This guy who, for the sake of the story I'll call... idk, Nebuchadnezzar, has somehow fixed my dislocated shoulder and gave me smelling salts to wake me up.

– Did you fix my dislocated shoulder??

– Yeah, kinda...

– ...and you just happened to carry smelling salts with you?...

– God works in mysterious ways...

– Nebuchadnezzar, how do you know this stuff??

– You see, I know a lot of stuff, because I am a...

$$...Fullstack Engineer®$$

Good omen! For the rest of the time we've worked together I haven't heard anything but "yes" from this guy. It seemed like he knew how to do literally anything. Algorithm design? Easy. Memory management? No problem. Multithreading? You name it.

I'm not gonna wait till the end of the article to address the elephant in the room: no, we're not married now. Back to the story.

A-Z

Being young and naive, I thought that Nebuchadnezzar was special. Turns out, knowing a lot of things about a lot of things is his work. You know, it's like a trait that Fullstack engineers possess. In other words, you cannot survive as a Fullstack engineer without the ability to constantly learn and be good at many, many things at once.

A Fullstack engineer can carry the whole team. Or be a one-man army. You can have a dozen front-end developers, back-end developers and data architects fighting in a room or you can have one Fullstack engineer getting the job done. Not to downplay the benefits of having a large team of diverse professionals – a little bit of fighting can go a long way (just kidding) – but there companies where one (1) Fullstack engineer can be an absolute life-saver (pun intended).

A-Ω

If you don't believe me, here's a list of things that an experienced Fullstack engineer can do:

• Gather and analyze requirements for software projects.
• Design, architect, and plan the structure of software applications.
• Develop user interfaces using modern web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Implement responsive design principles to ensure compatibility across various devices and screen sizes.
• Create wireframes, prototypes, and mockups to visualize user interfaces.
• Develop server-side logic using frameworks like Node.js, Django, or Ruby on Rails.
• Design and implement RESTful APIs for communication between client and server.
• Utilize databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Firebase for data storage and retrieval.
• Implement data validation and sanitation to ensure data integrity and security.
• Optimize database queries and data access patterns for performance.
• Implement authentication and authorization mechanisms for user access control.
• Integrate third-party services and APIs into applications.
• Write automated tests to ensure code reliability and maintainability.
• Perform code reviews to ensure adherence to coding standards and best practices.
• Refactor code for improved readability, scalability, and performance.
• Troubleshoot and debug issues in both frontend and backend components.
• Optimize application performance through code optimization and caching strategies.
• Monitor and analyze application metrics to identify areas for improvement.
• Implement logging and error tracking to facilitate debugging and maintenance.
• Deploy applications to cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Configure and manage infrastructure using tools like Docker, Kubernetes, or Terraform.
• Implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Collaborate with designers, product managers, and other team members throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Stay updated on emerging technologies, tools, and best practices in full-stack development.
• Mentor junior developers and provide technical guidance and support.
• Participate in sprint planning, stand-up meetings, and retrospectives as part of an Agile development team.
• Document code, processes, and system architecture for knowledge sharing and future reference.
• Conduct performance evaluations and provide feedback to team members.
• Participate in interviews and hiring processes to build and expand the development team.
• Contribute to open-source projects and developer communities to share knowledge and collaborate with peers.

And the list goes on. Moral of the story? Hire a Fullstack engineer. And do it now. If not for your tech project – then for your dislocated shoulder.

P.S. Long gone are the days when I managed teams of software developers. Now I tell stories about it for Match.dev – a company that finds the best software engineers out there. And I can tell you one thing – I've seen my fair share of recruiters and candidates, but I've never seen recruiters as well-versed and diligent as Match.dev, and candidates as successful as the ones they somehow find. You can drop us a line at team@match.dev

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