"It's better to be decent in a lot of areas than to be great in one area and terrible in another." - I disagree with this more the older I get.
What I'm suggesting is not that you should simultaneously learn to program, do accounting, lay bricks and repair shoes - but rather let's say that if you are a programmer, you should not only be good at backend programming, but also know a decent bit about frontend programming, server ops and team communications, and not be terrible at UI design, spreadsheets, and customer communications.
And there's nothing wrong with being a specialist - but I find that generally good teams need at least someone that can bridge across areas, even if that's not you.
Also, it's often easy or natural enough to not be terrible at something that you may not realize how bad things could be.
I am almost 30 now. I feel it gets tougher to be a generalist as any industry matures. Take Frontend / Backend development, versus Web Developer of the past.
Frontend Development alone has become more complicated than the total mental load a Web Developer would endure delivering both backend and frontend.
In that moment, as a generalist, as suggested above, you find yourself without a foundation, but rather crumbling ground. You better know how to fly.
Some systems are just too big for one person to make meaningful progress towards in a reasonable amount of time.
In contrast, my mental model is that it is only worth knowing a little or a lot. The middle ground is only useful when you are filling a gap.
* If you know a little, you know enough to reason about the topic and identify how you can outsource your needs. eg, you know enough about accounting to pick and manage an accountant. * If you know a lot, that's your value add and you can provide that service.
Where if if you know a "medium amount"... * you still need to outsource to an expert most of the time * or you can't find the right set of expertise to outsource to and you must fill the gap yourself.
By gaining “medium” competence in multiple areas, I have repeatedly been the only person in town who could bring three or four competencies together for a task.
I think one of the most obvious ways “jobs are moving” is towards self-sufficiency and small, flexible teams that can jump into new and rapidly changing situations.
Generalists wanted!
My early observation was that if you have a particularly valuable skill, you can easily find yourself on the clock in 6-minute increments and/or under someone else’s thumb.
As an inventor/promoter or solo consultant (entrepreneur, I guess) it’s possible to find a sweet spot where the money is enough and the pressure is minimized. I suppose a specialist could do that too, with help from an agent.