> I recommend reading 'The Wealth of Nations'. As an economics textbook, it is fairly dated, but it makes the point that ten people with a specific specializati

> I recommend reading 'The Wealth of Nations'. As an economics textbook, it is fairly dated, but it makes the point that ten people with a specific specialization can do more than ten people all doing the same work at once. Therefore the value you can provide increases with specialization as you can be part of a team than can provide more. I think it's improper to retrofit a dated analogy into something innately complex like software engineering. It ignores the communication overhead needed in creating software which was almost absent in low mentally-taxing work of 18th century. Let's say a team wants to build a website. Are you sure you'll have better odds at making it in time with a specialist for HTML, CSS, and Javascript? Brook's Law is at play here — finely grained task spread across dozens of people who have a little idea about everyone else's work is bound to prove disastrous. The role of specialist is crucial, but only when the her knowledge in a singular aspect can save a lot of time for the whole team.