Comment by Scea91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scea91 | Hacker News Reader

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> If you care about things like income and career progression, do not let yourself become one of these people. They aren't valued, and it doesn't take a lot of staring at job postings or talking to hiring managers to figure out why.

I have the opposite experience. Being a generalist allowed me to "climb" fast at my current company as I am able to lead projects holistically and coordinate cross-functional teams.

I have no shortage of attractive offers, but more importantly I like to work this way. I can't imagine limiting myself to just one narrow area and ignore the big picture and so far it looks like I do not need to.

As for job descriptions: I would love to hire more of these people but it is difficult to put a job description through the system that would not be confusing. Thus, even I have written job descriptions for one specialisation that should be dominant, but in the fine print I make it clear that I am searching for someone with broader scope and will to basically "do what is needed".

PS: Thinking about it more... do you think industry legends like Jeff Dean or John Carmack fit more into the generalist archetype or are they narrow specialists?

> industry legends like Jeff Dean or John Carmack

Those are very bad examples that prove the gp's point. Sure, flexible and multitalented people are a huge asset IF they get their big break, if they get involved in a startup at the right time in the right industry, if they are lucky to not get crushed by abusive players etc. etc.

But the chances of success are very slim, you likely won't be John Carmack. For every Carmack there are thousands of failed game developers who never got their break. Starting a tech company in 2022 is very different from 1992 even if you get to Carmack's skill level. Meanwhile, holding a job is something that always works and being a specialist in a high demand area is strongly correlated with financial returns.

I write this as somewhat of a "renaissance man" interested in everything from engineering to coding, to economics, to political science, to philosophy - and even holding advanced degrees in these topics. Sure, I can make my paycheck in tech, but without a managerial track record and access to the upper echelons of capital and corporate power I won't be recognized as a critical asset for an organization nor will make "Kubernetes expert" money.

Luck is always an essential ingredient in success. Can you point to any counterexamples: i.e. an industry legend who is a specialist?

The point was that you don't need any luck to become an extremely well paid and well regarded specialist, just dedication and time.

If your objective is to become a legend, then by all means avoid specialization, and be prepared to fail with a probability of 99.9%, there can only be so many legends.

I think at some level specialists need to become generalists, or they will get stuck.

For a junior backend engineer, it might be okay to not know much about UX design, front end development, database administration, etc.

But at a certain level, you need to know about all the fields outside of your specialization as well. You need to understand why you are doing what you are doing, or you'll end up doing a bad job at it.

Re John Carmack. Seeing his journal, strongly a generalist that adapt.

I mean look at how they ran Armadillo. It was just a bunch of random problem solving constantly.

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