4 ms·

I am a generalist to the extreme, and I kind of hate it. * For non-job stuff I am a human encyclopedia. Within tech, I am quite resourceful when it comes to th

by screye 6y ago

I am a generalist to the extreme, and I kind of hate it. * For non-job stuff I am a human encyclopedia. Within tech, I am quite resourceful when it comes to the meta, but am never the go-to person for a particular task. * Did MechE -> CS -> ML.... so have a generalists technical education. * I have done meaty projects in all of Vision, NLP, ML for systems, Computational social science, HealthML at production/publishable levels. * I am great a public speaker and have been recommended to do go down the MBA rabbit hole by many people. But, I am too well meaning to play office politics. The constant feeling of imposter syndrome despite countless assurances becomes grating after a while. The only exception is cooking, and man does it feel good to KNOW that you are good at something. My greatest phobia in life is to be an "all bark, no bite" sort of person. I find anything and everything exciting, so my affliction seems to be permanent. But, if anyone is in my position; hunker down and get yourself a specialization: a safe space. It will take 2-5 years of full-time work on the exact thing, but then there comes what I presume is a strong sense of competence that you never need to question. After that you have your whole life to generalize. Might be a grass is greener on the other side situation, but my 2 cents.

notagoodidea 6y ago
I am right there (those moments before finding the safe-space) looking for a job and it's no good to be a generalist with a almost junior profile. I have worked in different industries at the same time being a researcher doing data analysis on remote sensing data for agriculture and environment and manager of 5 people team in a bar bootstrapping it from me alone to five people ; working on public health and malaria and being a project analyst for start-up in a start-up. The last three years, I wore so many hat just because I was feeling constrained to specialized in one job. As a result, looking for a job outside of my network in another country puts me in competition with people with 3y of work in only one specialization in one field. The imposter syndrome keeps growing as the time pass and I get more refusal but I know that it will be ok when a door will open. I assume it will take more time, more selling and sharpen some teeth before getting there. Thanks for the advice and the perspectives of a possible future.

by screye 6y ago

notagoodidea 6y ago

I am right there (those moments before finding the safe-space) looking for a job and it's no good to be a generalist with a almost junior profile. I have worked in different industries at the same time being a researcher doing data analysis on remote sensing data for agriculture and environment and manager of 5 people team in a bar bootstrapping it from me alone to five people ; working on public health and malaria and being a project analyst for start-up in a start-up. The last three years, I wore so many hat just because I was feeling constrained to specialized in one job. As a result, looking for a job outside of my network in another country puts me in competition with people with 3y of work in only one specialization in one field. The imposter syndrome keeps growing as the time pass and I get more refusal but I know that it will be ok when a door will open. I assume it will take more time, more selling and sharpen some teeth before getting there. Thanks for the advice and the perspectives of a possible future.