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Is finding people really so easy that you can let a great generalist go so you can afford an specialist? I ask because it's come up before in other contexts th

Is finding people really so easy that you can let a great generalist go so you can afford an specialist? I ask because it's come up before in other contexts that money isn't enough. If someone says here's $26 million, start 4 projects that should supposedly take 2 years each and have them done on time! Assume each of those projects takes 25 people. Somehow you need to find 100 people all on day 1 to meet your deadline. Few companies can find 100 good people quickly. Can you find 1 a day? Well then 5 months until you're fully staffed. 1 a week? It will be 4 years until you have the people. Maybe it works for Netflix but most companies struggle to find people to hire.

shostack 11y ago
Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying I agree with the approach. I think it might work for Netflix and other companies in certain circumstances. But like all leadership advice, every circumstance is unique to some degree and needs to be handled accordingly. That said, I personally think there is a lot of value in certain types of generalists, but not all (or rather, not in all cases). You see, when a company is very young, they may not have the best and brightest, but rather the people that were willing to shoulder a ton of risk, burn the midnight oil, etc. They may have been lucky to get both, but optimizing for one is not a guarantee of getting the other. So you get to a point where you can afford to hire more experienced individuals, and suddenly you might be faced with the ability to replace your current generalist with a much more experienced generalist, or a generalist that is T-shaped in their skill set. I used to think I was T-shaped (wide range of skills, very deep in one), and then I started becoming more M-shaped because I've gone very deep down multiple paths in my career. That was when I realized the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, and it enabled me to work exceptionally well in cross-functional technical environments. Specifically in my case, I started out in the marketing/advertising world, then went deep in analytics, and have gotten progressively more technical over the course of my career in terms of coding. Turns out that happens to be a valuable generalist combination. But even certain combinations may not be right for a company that wants someone who specialized in X for their entire career, and I respect that. Ultimately, experienced, high-performing generalists will have a relatively easy time finding jobs either elsewhere, or within their current company as it grows. Often times that turns into leadership roles. When it doesn't is when I could see you running into more issues with finding something new to do at the current company if they have fewer generalist individual contributor roles.

shostack 11y ago

Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying I agree with the approach. I think it might work for Netflix and other companies in certain circumstances. But like all leadership advice, every circumstance is unique to some degree and needs to be handled accordingly. That said, I personally think there is a lot of value in certain types of generalists, but not all (or rather, not in all cases). You see, when a company is very young, they may not have the best and brightest, but rather the people that were willing to shoulder a ton of risk, burn the midnight oil, etc. They may have been lucky to get both, but optimizing for one is not a guarantee of getting the other. So you get to a point where you can afford to hire more experienced individuals, and suddenly you might be faced with the ability to replace your current generalist with a much more experienced generalist, or a generalist that is T-shaped in their skill set. I used to think I was T-shaped (wide range of skills, very deep in one), and then I started becoming more M-shaped because I've gone very deep down multiple paths in my career. That was when I realized the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, and it enabled me to work exceptionally well in cross-functional technical environments. Specifically in my case, I started out in the marketing/advertising world, then went deep in analytics, and have gotten progressively more technical over the course of my career in terms of coding. Turns out that happens to be a valuable generalist combination. But even certain combinations may not be right for a company that wants someone who specialized in X for their entire career, and I respect that. Ultimately, experienced, high-performing generalists will have a relatively easy time finding jobs either elsewhere, or within their current company as it grows. Often times that turns into leadership roles. When it doesn't is when I could see you running into more issues with finding something new to do at the current company if they have fewer generalist individual contributor roles.