I'd rather hire someone who is effective and passionate about solving problems in a particular space. If I hire a full stack web developer, and then they burn out because I had only frontend tickets for them for half a year, that's not so nice.
I don't mind rebranding your LinkedIn to make it look like you're the Kubernetes DevOps guy, as long as that means you're totally fine with working the DevOps for my Kubernetes clusters for the foreseeable future.
In an ideal world we could shove around generalist developers to whatever is necessary at the moment, but the reality is each developer is a human with hopes and dreams and ambitions and not every role will fit those.
As a generalist, you've not only got my goat, you just took it to town and got it drunk.
This sort of over reasoning is part of what bugs me about this industry.
Many devs change jobs at the drop of a hat, turnover is already high. Yet here you are, worried about job retention, trying to second guess what a dev knows about their own happiness.
I know you mean well, both for the org, and the person, but what makes you think you know, better than the dev, what will stress them out or not?
You aren't them, so just ask, and as long as it is clear they have thought of it, and want to move ahead, you should 100% drop the matter.
Frankly (as if I could be more frank, heh), likely there will be something entirely unrelated which will bug the dev. And all your concerns will be for naught.
Except, of course, you are throwing people's resumes in the trash bin, thus reducing your talent pool, due to unfounded concerns.
Over reasoning? Because I ask a developer what they want to work on during an interview? Guess what, turnover is high when your developers are unhappy with the work they're doing. I've had developers do work that they didn't like to do, and they quit, so now I make sure they're gonna be happy where I want them.
I'm not second guessing anything, in fact my comment says the exact opposite. If a developer reworks their LinkedIn to highlight some expertise they're interested in working on, then I fully trust them on that and will gladly hire them.
I'm not sure where your whole angle of not trusting developers to know their own happiness comes from. But let me be clear, if you're a generalist with relevant experience I will definitely ask you to come over for an interview. I'm not throwing valuable resumes in the trash. But during the interview I will be frank about what the job entails, and I'll gauge your response to figure out if you'll be content. Whether I'm effective or not I don't know, but I'm going to have to at least try to get the right person at the right position.
edit: BTW I'm not just saying this as a CTO at a small startup, I'm also saying this as a generalist with highly valuable frontend skills and I pray to god I don't have to get into another frontend job (either directly, or by being lured into it after applying as a generalist).
I don't mind rebranding your LinkedIn to make it look like you're the Kubernetes DevOps guy, as long as that means you're totally fine with working the DevOps for my Kubernetes clusters for the foreseeable future.
In an ideal world we could shove around generalist developers to whatever is necessary at the moment, but the reality is each developer is a human with hopes and dreams and ambitions and not every role will fit those.