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Comment by mike_h | Hacker News Reader

When I was younger I tried the generalist consultant thing. Did a bunch of interesting jobs and patted myself on the back for being able to tackle so many different types of problems, stacks, stages of the business, etc. It actually was really fun.

To my surprise though, as I got more and more general the rates I could demand got lower and lower, even though I had all these successful projects and good references etc. I finally picked up on the fact that the only companies who would consider a generalist either didn’t know what they were doing, or couldn’t afford an expert in the specific skills they needed.

Decided to specialize in something in-demand, and life got a lot easier.

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"only companies who wanted a generalist either didn’t know what they were doing, or couldn’t afford an expert in the specific skills they needed." Spot on.

I went down the same path, and came to the same conclusion. Most of the time you don't even have to learn that many new skills to "specialize", you can just change the messaging and positioning on your website/resume/conversations with future clients.

I've had mixed experience here. It REALLY depends on what you're specializing in; specialization alone doesn't cut it. Also, you can get away with being a skills generalist if you instead specialize in a field/topic/etc (IMO).

So its more about positioning, I think. How you're able to sell yourself and the skills you have.

Agree on both points, and quite possible the “small financial firms” thing the OP has been doing is a targetable niche.

I once met a programmer who, while broadly skilled, had looked around and seen that .NET programmers were in high demand: "So, I became a .NET programmer!", and things worked out well for him.

That observation has resonated in my head since.

What you say is 100% true. It's a bit sad nonetheless, companies often hire specialists when what they really need is a great generalist. Few orgs understand their own needs very well.

It's also a difficult exercise to the generalist-minded, to market oneself as a specialist. One must adopt a very reductive view of one's own skills of experiences. "From now on, I'll just be a Python programmer who specializes in backend systems for the medical industry" is hard to internalize.

Be an expert with the ability to generalize in your back pocket when you need to. A generalist skill set does not mean you have to do generalist jobs either.

I've been lucky in that respect. A lot of start-up financial firms in my sector are founded by traders looking to go our on their own. The last thing they want to do is deal with "back office" matters so it is one space where generalism pays a premium.

I've done well and been paid well but I'm moving away from generalism for other reasons.

That almost sounds like a productise-able thing? What is the sector ? Is there a "backend in a box" possible ?

What fields/tech stacks would you recommend to specialize on? I have nearly a decade of experience in programming but I'll probably specialize just to stay in-demand.

What did you specialize in?

Javascript.

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