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Academia is not the real world, and they always seem to be struggling to be Useful.

A generalist who can program, market, and run a business is likely going to be better at making good decisions over someone with only 1 of those skills.

Forget about Academia for a moment.

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Decisions about what? The low-hanging-fruit software companies have already been built; the most successful new software companies are all about a specific vertical, and this requires specialization.

Trivially, yes it would be best to be 100% expert in programming, 100% expert in marketing, 100% expert in business, and 100% expert in whatever the business domain is, but that isn't feasible. That's why most new start ups have a founding team, not a founding superperson.

I'm not buying it. What companies are you thinking of? I feel like I will either find them seeking out a generalist for some subset of their workload or a company that is just as young and valuable that hires massive numbers of generalists (e.g. Uber, Postmates/Doordash, WeWork)

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