I cannot agree with this enough. I'm a pretty capable "generalist software engineer", but what keeps me employed is expertise in virtualization and high-perfor

I cannot agree with this enough. I'm a pretty capable "generalist software engineer", but what keeps me employed is expertise in virtualization and high-performance virtual networking. Prior to that, it was expertise in distributed systems and a knack for debugging distributed failures. The history here is relevant: later in the thread Thomas points out that you can switch domains. My time spent in distributed systems with multi-millisecond quorum periods is more or less directly applicable to debugging synchronization issues at CPU clock speeds. The tools used to observe the issue are different, but the reasoning process for untangling the set of plausible partial orderings is the same. Specialize in something valuable. Continuously evaluate the next most valuable skill to acquire based on where you are and where you want to be.