> many people end up gaining very detailed knowledge about one particular aspect of such large systems
Very, very true, except that most of these people also have the experience of having had to build and debug everything end to end in past lives and are therefore good at all of it. They may have ended up in a “depth” position due to focusing on one problem at scale, but the good ones could be thrown at any mysterious problem that isn’t part of their area of expertise and still kill it. This, OP, is where your startup jack of all trades skills shine. I highly recommend trying out the giant cloud experience and becoming one of those subject matter experts for a few years. You can always take that gained knowledge about “how the big kids do it” and apply it back in startup land, and you’ll be extra valuable then. I went from a career in desktop/embedded software to piddling startups to a big cloud and I’m starting to tire of the cloud pressure but feel like I’m going to be 10 times more effective at the next startup I join because of it. Beware, though: it’s hard to say goodbye to the money hose.
Very, very true, except that most of these people also have the experience of having had to build and debug everything end to end in past lives and are therefore good at all of it. They may have ended up in a “depth” position due to focusing on one problem at scale, but the good ones could be thrown at any mysterious problem that isn’t part of their area of expertise and still kill it. This, OP, is where your startup jack of all trades skills shine. I highly recommend trying out the giant cloud experience and becoming one of those subject matter experts for a few years. You can always take that gained knowledge about “how the big kids do it” and apply it back in startup land, and you’ll be extra valuable then. I went from a career in desktop/embedded software to piddling startups to a big cloud and I’m starting to tire of the cloud pressure but feel like I’m going to be 10 times more effective at the next startup I join because of it. Beware, though: it’s hard to say goodbye to the money hose.