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> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's in
by cosmie 9y ago
> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.
It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations.
I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need).
Looking for a new job is a pain. Companies don't explicitly hire for it, politics can come into play if the generalist doesn't know how to dance around the company in a way that doesn't threaten others' fiefdoms, there's no easy way to suss out competence from arrogance during an interview, no manager wants to frontload your salary on their budget when they won't be getting the full benefit of it, and a host of other things.
Generalists are valuable to a company, holistically. They're oil to the machine and fit in between all the specialized cogs to smooth things out and let you run the engine hotter without breaking down. But managers only manage their own cogs, hiring only looks for the cogs they're told to find, and at the end of the day whether there's oil in the machine is Someone Else's Problem. Very few teams exist which have the prerogative and budget to hire for that holistic need, so most companies just go without oil and don't think about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- slededit 9y agoA lot of comapanies have "A" teams they send in when necessary. The US Digital Service was one example of this.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago> "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need)." Your job and experience sound very similar to my current role. I don't have an accurate job title anymore, and I very much see myself as the oil that makes the engine of the company run more smoothly. I wear about four or five different hats, all depending on what fires I need to put out. Good to meet someone doing something similar.
- neetle 9y agoHow did you get into a role like that? Sounds like something that would be fun.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoIt is fun. As for how I got into it, I got hired for a different role (test engineer), proved myself in this role but also took on extra responsibilities outside my remit (I should note that I also had worked in various different technical roles in previous jobs). An opportunity came up to be a founding member of a new Business Analyst team and I took it, but because of the structure of the company I'm in I didn't leave the IT Development team fully, so now I sit somewhere between them. In the space of a week I can be doing data analysis, business analysis, software testing, software development and user training. The hours are long, but I'm seeing improvements in the business culture gradually coming in as a result of this work, which is satisfying.
- eropple 9y agoI've said this in a sibling thread, but most shops I've seen that doesn't have This Guy are worse-run, less friendly, and higher business-risk shops. (Which isn't to say that counterexamples don't exist, but I can't think of a good one in my experience. The best companies institutionalize the role.)
- ZenoArrow 9y agoPart of the reason my job needs to exist is to address lack of adequate staffing levels and dysfunctional inter-departmental practices. I would say the company I work for is transitioning between one that is haphazardly run to one that is more professional, but that transition doesn't happen overnight, and you need people to pick up the slack during that transition.
- cosmie 9y agoVery true. From what I've observed, it's because a firm with This Guy allows that role to absorb all the odds and ends that pop up and need handled, while allowing specialists to focus on what they do best, maximizing their work output and general work satisfaction. A firm without This Guy means that more small problems/needs get ignored since it doesn't clearly fall into anyone's scope of work or warrant the cost associated with the specialist. And if it gets large enough to not ignore, a specialist will consistently have to context shift to something outside of their specialty when something tangentially related pops up. This decreases their productivity considerably, decreases their satisfaction as they can't focus on what they truly enjoy doing, and increases business risk as things get overcomplicated or slip through due to a more biased view on the strategy to perform the work (based on whatever the individuals specialty is).
- mattgreenrocks 9y ago> most companies just go without oil and don't think about it Practice-wise, it astounds me how many people/institutions expect different results from everyone else while hewing to the same practices as everyone else. Why do you think you'll be the exception? Why can't you look at the reality of what is working and what isn't? This applies to so many areas of life, but it is extremely pronounced in business, where everyone cargo cults every little practice of AmaGooFaceSoft and believes that is what made them who they are. It's like there's an extreme deficit of original thought.