Ask HN: Is it better to apply as a dual iOS/Android developer or specialize?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11639447

by kirykl • 10 years ago

5 2 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Also from hiring perspective, my company has a job posting for an Android/iOS developer, requiring expertise in both. Is this common? As an applicant would it be better to pass on these hybrid roles?

opless• 10 years ago

I am. But I as I do contracting and choose interesting projects I tend to be a generalist so my outlook is skewed.

If you were just starting out, I'd suggest you work with Xamarin to do your app development in, and Unity3d if you were doing games or 3d work (Though you could use monogame with xamarin if you were so inclined). But then again, my comfort zone is C#.

Android and iOS apps these days tend to look very similar, with the main difference being a soft back button for iOS and none for Android. Windows phone can look very different if you use the Metro design language but quite a few apps that I've used seem to be mostly ignoring it (admittedly niche ones) and looking like the big two.

Whatever developer you hire will be "better" (or at least more comfortable) at one platform than another.

Have you done your market research? Are you targeting a particular market that is likely to have one phone type rather than another? I've noticed that the different platforms tend to attract different types of people. App Annie is a good source on this market data though you'll have to ignore the most-popular apps as you're not going to be the next facebook/ebay etc no matter how hard you try.

on_and_off• 10 years ago

It is not very common but it happens. In my company we are divided in feature teams, some of the smaller features have only one mobile engineer for both iOS & Android (Windows has its own very small team for all the features).

It can be beneficial for both the employer & employee, but it is a bit of a particular case.

Ask HN: Is it better to apply as a dual iOS/Android developer or specialize?

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