The Rise of the Generalist

It used to be that there wasn't a debate. There was a choice of whether to be a jack-of-all-trades or not, but it was always pretty clear that both sides had advantages, and both sides were needed for a functioning system. Nobody debated whether each side was needed.

It's even murkier today, though, because while I'm a specialist (IT), and I'm a specialist (programming), I'm also a generalist (web, mobile, desktop... I do it all) and that kind of thing didn't really happen before. You were a handyman, or an electrician. Not some weird hybrid of the 2 where you went down 1 specialized path, only to branch out at the end.

However, once you have a position at a company, I have found that companies love the generalist because that person can wear many hats, decreasing the need for more employees.

But then, is the change going to come in the form of a post-corporate world? One where, because of globalization and hyper-specialization happening beyond our shores, the US undergoes a second "industrial revolution" vis a vis the generalist contractor, who has no corporate affiliation as far as career/jobs go, but goes from job to job, doing whatever is needed and filling in roles as necessary, often from home? From the trivial (stuffing envelopes, follow-the-sun sales/customer support, transcriptions) to non-trivial (programming/development, deployment and remote monitoring and management of cloud compute services, translation, creative output, paralegal or administration), all while on 1099 rather than salaried full-timers. And, this kind of generalist work can be also farmed out, as well, to specialists. What the labor-intensive fields like construction and farming has done with subcontractors and day-laborers, we (meaning both big megacorporations and startups/microbusinesses/mom+pops) can do for our own "softer" industries.

Which, then, begs the question: Is the future a world of mega-multinationals making and doing everything for us? It really seemed to be prior to the 2008 crash. It may be my perception because I'm working on my own multiple side projects and I frequent HN so much, but I feel like the ground is shifting. It looks like it's becoming more of a post-corporate scenario, where the incoming generations Y and Z distrust the corporations by default in favor of the small, more personalized and targeted, vendor (on or offline). One needn't look further than HNs own submissions to see the popularity of indie made goods,the popularity of Kickstarter projects, microISVs (little web apps, mobile apps by small teams), the popularity of Etsy and the Humble Indie bundle and runaway stories like Angry Birds, indie scribes Amanda Hocking and John Locke, and even smaller winemakers and microbreweries. It looks like things are flowing in another direction.

A keyword search is going to favor the generalist; we have a lot more keywords than a specialist. As a generalist, I have many languages, applications and operating systems on my resume, many of which I don't know all that well. These feed the keyword searches.

That's the thing; most people who have HR departments that do keyword scanning? To them, I look deeply technical and specialized. Most places like that are simply not set up to recruit or handle real technical people.

I don't know why this struck me now but hasn't otherwise. It feels self-limiting to say "I'm a Ruby developer," but it doesn't to say "I write in Ruby," or "I've written in Ruby." I feel uncomfortable making the things that I do, or the things that I have done or do right now, the identity that I use to classify myself.

Sure! As long as you understand the problems and theories that are important to the domain (let it be machine learning, artificial intelligence, parallel/distributed programming, combinatorial optimization or cryptography), the language is the easiest thing to learn.

On the other hand, if I need some very specific optimization that only people that know C++ intimately know, then such knowledge would not help me. On the other hand, I may only contract such specialists, depending on how often their specialty will be needed.

> Just one example without even leaving the software development world: If I'm a Ruby developer (I'm not) would you hire me to work on your trading system built in C++?

It depends on a) my assessment of your transferrable skills and b) your domain knowledge.

In fact, coding language skills are not the best indicator of whether a prospective employee is a good fit for a particular position.

We're a java shop. Hasn't stopped us from hiring smart, motivated people who've been specializing in other languages. Worked out quite well every time we've done it, too.