> businesses reward specialist labor more This is a false premise, at least when stated so generally. Look at Google, a company that is known for compensating

> businesses reward specialist labor more This is a false premise, at least when stated so generally. Look at Google, a company that is known for compensating workers quite well. They mostly hire generalist software engineers, which I think is due to a combination of reasons: - Google is a big established company where a lot of the work is not the sexiest in the industry. This means that people don't necessarily want to stick around in the same team forever. This means people need to switch teams every few years in order to keep their job interesting, which is much easier for a generalist. - Generalists can specialize and go back to different work later if it makes sense. It's harder for people starting out as specialists to do this. - There's uncertainty as to what projects will be available to work on in the future. This means that specific kinds of specialists may not always be needed. - Many teams aren't big enough to contain all the specialists you might need for the project. Having people who can wear many hats solves this problem.