It could also pay off to be a specialist instead of a generalist though. Depends on what you want to do. Say if you become an expert in large scale distributed

It could also pay off to be a specialist instead of a generalist though. Depends on what you want to do. Say if you become an expert in large scale distributed systems or some cutting edge AI techniques which require tons of data, which only big companies can afford to have, you'd still be very highly valued and probably better paid than the millions of generalists who can set up a normal software system. You'll become indispensable. On the other hand if you want to start a company yourself later, then being a specialist wouldn't help.