Can someone explain to me what is meant by, "full stack," nowadays? I see posts by people saying they're, "full stack," but don't know anything about Linux, networking, databases, or daemon configs.

How can you possibly call yourself a full stack engineer if you don't know anything about infrastructure?

@VoiceBit

Yeah, but where did that thinking come from? That's a tiny piece of the full stack. Full stack engineers are very expensive, because of the massive expanse of knowledge and skills they have. Is this newer, incorrect use of the term an attempt to co-opt it to try to justify undeserved compensation?

Also, I was just informed by a project guy here at work that the full stack also includes a firm grasp of business logic, determination of requirements, budgeting, accounting, and project management.

@bahua I didn't think all those management responsibilities were in scope for full stack.
In my opinion full stack means everything tech related from conception to usage devices of an application or service.
If a full stack dev was given enough time he could complete every step of setting up environment, development and support.
TL;DR:
I think a full stack dev is a networking engineer, front- and back-end dev in one.

@rootshell

I didn't think so either, and they certainly didn't figure into my concept of the moniker when I posted the rant. So I'm fine with proceeding without including them.

Plus, project managers are not to be trusted. :)

@VoiceBit

From everything I'm seeing on web searches, a full stack person knows everything, from hardware to frontend. That's why they cost so much. "I know node," is monumentally short of that mark.

Well consider this. I have met people that still work with classic ASP (i used to be one of them albeit not by choice) and would have to: design the database for whatever they were building, create the backend code and also the front end, so they were tasked with db,backend and front end development thus being full stack developers. They would not know anything about Linux, server maintenance or sys admin related topics, but in terms of being able to design and implement a web service they were pretty decent. It is for the better, because then you start to get tasked on shit that you would rather not do.

@AleCx04

It's a wide breadth of knowledge, but it's all top-tier, application level. Full stack means being able to stand up an application from baremetal without any help from anyone. When a job listing says a full stack person is required, that's what they mean, and they will pay mountains of money for it, because that level of knowledge is extremely rare.

Full stack is more of a generalisation of knowing front end development and backend development and all the pieces of the puzzle to do the entire job.

Basically if you can take a project from scope, build the front end, back end and the infrastructure and environments to cater for the project on your own, then you meet pretty much meet the expectations.

We don’t or for some refuse to specialise in a single side of the development.

This also allows you to jump from project to project with ease as required and not get stuck doing only one part of the development tasks.

@bahua i agree. But my experienc3 is that not everyone is willing to pay top dollar for it. Which is why I hope people would stop using the term!