Lo, the ultimate full-stack developer of your dreams

The perfect technologist does not exi—

No, seriously, the perfect software developer, job candidate or human does not exist. But you wouldn’t know that from what some recruiters and hiring managers are asking for. Sometimes, and maybe too often, when it’s time to start hiring tech positions for a growing company, people hear “full-stack developer” and think it means “superhuman.”

Expertise in front- and back-end development across 15 languages, styles and frameworks? iOS and Android mobile app experience? LAMP and MERN and MEAN stacks? Don’t forget about DevOps and database skills. Oh, and 20 years of experience in every programming language, minimum. Please have an EGOT, too.

Not so much. But … if they did exist, what would their skillset look like?

Martin Focazio, CEO of the tech consultancy firm Coherent Ways in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, created a tongue-in-cheek chart that shows the skills of an imaginary full-stack developer who does it all. It was a response to clients who had a hard time understanding why, as he helped them with their company’s tech strategy, he would split what they called one full-stack developer position into three to five full-stack positions.

The comically massive chart, he told Technical.ly via our public Slack, grew over a few months to illustrate to clients that expecting a single person to do the work of several full-stack developers was unrealistic.

“This imaginary ‘full-stack developer’ just kind of emerged one day recently after I got a much more rational request to help get ‘full-stack’ people in Costa Rica with any of LAMP, [MERN] or MEAN (which I think are more realistic),” he said. “I just started combining various definitions’ versions of full-stack developer into one amalgamated ultra-dev and it sort of made itself.”

Check out what he came up with below, and click here for a larger version. You don’t have to be a technologist to see that assuming one person can be proficient in every listed skill isn’t reasonable.

(Chart by Martin Focazio)

What do you think? Is it missing any essential (or wholly nonessential) skills? Let us know: