Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by stared | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

stared

Often we cherish specialists quoting "Jack of all trades, master of none".

Curiously enough, the full version of the original has a twist:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/7-phrases-youve-been-misquo...

View on HN

There is another aspect that is relevant, and that is that the effort needed to get to the 99th percentile of some ability is way larger than that to get to the 90th, and often, you can do very well with just being in the 85th. So you can become pretty good at many different (often complementary) things, in ways that likely make you way more effective than that guy who's a guru in a very specific topic.

Then again, sometimes that guru is also needed.

instaguru = STFW, IRC #thing, scihub/libgen 'thing'.

This is a good observation and applies to non-professional skills as well. For example, you can learn to repair your clothes at an 85% level using only a $20 sewing kit and some YouTube videos. Taking a well-loved shirt to a tailor is a chore, throwing it away is sad, but mending it is gratifying. Yet somehow, despite the amount of knowledge freely available on the internet, things like this are increasingly neglected or left to specialists.

Yes, I meant it in the general sense, actually, though it probably didn't come through like that.

Also, being somewhat skilled in many things can give you enough knowledge to know which to use and when to learn more.

One of the things I treasure in a good generalist is the ability to be an informed consumer. They can think a little farther down the road about what we need from solutions and why.

Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic) offers similar career advice: https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...

Indeed, and given the costs to become the very best, it's often a choice like this. Say you need to hire athletes with in experience swimming, running, and gymnastics to design some classes for your school. Would you rather hire:

- 3 gold medal Olympians, each of whom have medaled in the 3 areas

- 1 bronze medal Olympian who has single-handedly medaled in swimming, running, and gymnastics?

> - 1 bronze medal Olympian who has single-handedly medaled in swimming, running, and gymnastics?

Has anyone ever achieved this? It sounds like you're saying you would rather hire 1 person that doesn't exist rather than hire 3 people that do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_athletes_with_Olympi...

Doesn't look like it.

But look at the year: most of them seem to be pre 1950's. Does that still apply?

Does _what_ still apply?

Not exactly that, but there's the various combination events-- most especially the pentathlon (fencing, shooting, swimming, riding, cross-country running).

But even look at decathletes -- they usually rarely medal in individual event sports these days, and their personal bests are pretty far off the mark. Asthon Eaton got two decathlon golds, but each of his personal bests would be at the back of the standings of the individual athletic events at the Olympics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Eaton#Outdoor

Or triathletes. Basically no one who is a world-class runner is a world-class swimmer, or vice versa. But you can be confident that a world-class triathlete is a pretty damn good runner, swimmer, and cyclist.

Let's not fool ourselves into thinking being bronze level is what it means to be a generalist. That's still performing at an unbelievably high level.

It’s an analogy.

I do have a strange fascination with Modern Pentathlon. Basically none of those athletes are truly "world class" in any of the 5 disciplines if I understand correctly, but they're the best at the combination of all of them.

I worked for a D1 track and field team while I was in college and I found the Pent/Hep/Decathlon some of the most fascinating sports with how coaches approached which athletes to submit. Some coaches (like the one at my college) chose to submit true generalists, athletes that wouldn't usually win an individual event but would get points in most of them. But other coaches favored submitting athletes that had distinct specialties, assuming they'd win that event and then get points in a couple of the other events. It's been a while so I don't exactly remember which approach seemed to work better but I found the strategy fascinating!

Actually it's more likely that this longer quote is a recent formulation.

See the research in this thread: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/408782/is-jack-o...

Definitely, maybe I don't get the joy of a being a "X Developer", yet it allows me to bring tasks to good harbour, an in a fashion driven industry, it makes relatively easy to jump.

In my experience, a master of one is most of the time better described as a jack of one trade, anyway.

My ex liked to point out, “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”

I prefer "jack of all trades, master of learning".

Just because information is conflicting and different doesn’t mean it’s truer than your first exposure.

No evidence for that etymology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com