Agree with all your points, but in my experience, early-stage startups require full-stack competency due to rapidly changing priorities and a small team.
Generally they don’t require the entire team to be full stack. But being able to flip priorities from 2:1 to 1:2 front end vs backend is often necessary to maintain velocity between milestones. Prettying up the interface is a lot of work. So is scaling up your backend for the new customers your facelift just got you.
In a small place having a third of your team being full stack takes a lot of stress off the planning people.
Agree 100% on that, I didn't mean to imply startups want a team full of generalists. But engineer #1 likely has to be full-stack. As you say, once you have 3+ engineers, a mix of full-stack and domain experts can ease planning challenges.
