What Young People Don't Know | Hacker News Reader

What Young People Don't Know

betashop.com

9 pointsespadagroup8 comments

I also agree with 2-5, but don't agree that specialists always get further than generalists. I'm very much a generalist -- within the fairly broad realm of infrastructure architecture, that is -- and I think that's served me very well. To understand the whole thing, whatever it is, is very valuable.

Within your world you may be a generalist, but the OP is not a programmer and many if not most of the people he is talking about are not either. To them and most people you are very specialized.

"Specialists get farther than generalists." I think this is a statement of very dubious veracity.

I'll defend this position.

I'd rather someone be deep that shallow. In my career I've found that people who have unique talents tend to rise to the top because they offer that unique something that others dont.

Now, that unique talent can also be something broad like being a general, or being the the guy whose best at code reviews.

My point is that you've got to be really good at something, not just kinda good at a lot of things.

I thought it was odd as well. I think that he meant that the guy who knows a subject very well is more likely to be advanced in responsibility/seniority quickly.

If I wanted to promote somebody to be the lead developer for a small project, I might be satisfied with someone who knew the code for that project very well. But if I wanted to promote someone beyond that level, I'd be looking for somebody who knew different parts of the company's products and how they worked together (e.g., the UI and the back-end), and who understood the needs of the customers to some degree -- someone who could see the "big picture".

He's talking about the "jack of all trades, master of none" type person.

Just because you are the absolute best at one thing does not mean you are incompetent in all other areas.

To take your example: of course you wouldn't want to promote someone who only knows the code of one project very well and of course you want to promote someone who understands how all the parts of the product work together. However, the person who knows how all the parts work together and is the absolute best at shipping code, get a lot farther than the person who knows how they all work together, but doesn't execute any given function well enough to handle on his own

I don't think that any of those 5 things are particularly restricted to or more commonly found amongst young people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com