Thanks for sharing. I think it all comes down to the role and career path. Engineers that are specialized are way more interesting for large corporations, beca

Thanks for sharing. I think it all comes down to the role and career path. Engineers that are specialized are way more interesting for large corporations, because they have a lot of engineers and most of them work on very specialized problems. A CTO of a tech startup should be a decent engineer, but with a much broader knowledge-base than someone, let's say, optimizing V8. I'm currently finishing my master's degree and got a contract for after graduation for one of the best management trainee programs in Germany for a technical R&D management career path (the company has roughly 1 such position across all roles and departments for every 4000 employees) and it pays over 50% of the average starting salary. I see that as a very successful career start. What made me interesting for the company wasn't just my internship/work experience as a software engineer (equivalent to about 2 years full-time work) that should place me among the top 10-20% of my fellow students, but my broader experience as a leader in several clubs. The best fit for the role wasn't someone specialized in engineering, but someone with a genuine interest in leading that is still capable and at least somewhat knowledgeable of software engineering. My skills in hacking LaTeX to do my bidding or knowing the insides of Office Open XML format were absolutely irrelevant or only marginally emphasized that I can learn some niche stuff. Broadening your skillset only helps career success, when the learned skills supplement the requirements of the position.