The opportunity cost of a broad skillset | Hacker News Reader

The opportunity cost of a broad skillset

rc3.org

30 pointsblasdel18 comments

As a side note, don't make the mistake of assuming that you have to choose between being really good at one thing or being acceptable at many things. It's possible to be really good at many things.

It's possible to be really good at many things.

What are some of the many things that you have seen one person be really good at at the same time?

After edit: thanks for the kind reply, but I kind of thought from your original comment (parent to this comment) that you had a more recent example than Da Vinci in mind. What living persons are there who are conspicuously really good at many things?

http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/course/6/6.055/readi...

Just think about your typical polymath like da Vinci. Sometimes people can be really good at many things, and if they assume that they can only be really good at one thing, they may not even try to be really good at many things.

So my main point is: don't assume from the beginning that you can't do many things well, or it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It really depends on what you mean by really good. I agree that you can't be really good at many things - but only relative to yourself. Meaning that if I (personally) practice Skill A for a week versus practicing Skills A,B and C in the same week I would almost certainly be better at Skill A.

But if you work on Skills A,B and C for a week and another dude works on Skill A for a week there's no guarantee that you're going to be worse than him. Depends on smarts, I guess.

I guess it's academic but inexplicably interesting to me.

Carl Djerassi, Cosma Shalizi, Tyler Cowen, Richard Feynman, John von Neumann. Djerassi was a Stanford chemist and has multiple works of fiction published, Shalizi is a physicist/statistician/sociologist, Cowen is an economist/public intellectual, neither Feynman nor Vonneumann need introduction.

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/edward-carr/last-days...

Michael Crichton comes to mind too.

I think your objection is a good one. Horizontal scaling in humans has low efficiency, so it's usually best to max out the benefits of vertical scaling first.

That being said, Scott Adams' career advice[1] seems pretty solid. In short, it is usually just as useful to be competent at three different things as to be extremely good at one thing.

[1] http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...

I run into this problem all the time with recruiters, especially non-technical recruiters, who are the kind of people who just want to match up YEARS_EXPERIENCE_NEEDED with ${ACRONYM} down a list, and if you don't match up, you're filtered out. It's very frustrating because it's hard to get interviews, which is where I have a chance to shine, and show that client why taking on someone with a broad skillset -- especially one who understands business issues -- is better than hiring a hyper-specialized candidate.

Unfortunately, many companies don't want engineers who understand business issues, because they ask hard questions.

Personally, I really prefer engineers who spend time understanding the business: It forces me to have data for my decisions.

Want a job in Utah? ;)

>Want a job in Utah? ;)

Only if it's telecommute. :)

I'm not currently looking, but I'm always interested in Utah-based tech. You talking about clicklock?

This is exactly the problem I run into as a technical person with an MBA. It's very hard to demonstrate broad technical knowledge via a cover letter and CV. Without languages and acronyms recruiters have nothing to match up my "skills" against.

Is it too hard to beef up resume with required buzzwords?

I have as many of the requisite buzzwords and acronyms of which I can legitimately claim knowledge.

The problem is that's not enough. For example, a job description might call for "Eclipse: 5-7 years". Eclipse. A freaking IDE.

Or "Swing: 5+ years". I've used Swing off and on since Java 1.2, but I certainly don't have 5+ years of it, thus my knowledge of other GUI frameworks (like Cocoa's UIKit) counts for nothing. And never mind that making a UI is more a process of proper design principles than it is of knowing intricacies of any particular framework.

Harumph!

Did you use Swing 5 years ago and refreshed what it is today?

Claim 5+ years of experience with Swing.

These are rules of the game.

(I assume you want to get that interview).

First time using Swing was about 13 years ago, actually...

So put "10+ years of using Swing" on your resume and tell recruiter that you are using Swing since 1998.

Again, I assume that you don't mind using Swing on your next project.

Learning the job on billable time is normal in consulting.

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