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> Generalists (juniors) often innovate better than specialists I don’t think all generalists are juniors nor are all juniors generalists. Why lump them togeth

• softwaredoug 2y ago
  In the context of your company, I think the dichotomy holds. A senior dev is a specialist in your company, a junior often has pretty broad skills that apply across companies.
  • 383toast 2y ago
    I don't see why a senior dev does not have broad skills that apply across companies?
    • bluGill 2y ago
      You will have specific skills related to your industry. There are weird issues in every niche that you build up as you spend time in that niche. Senior devs from outside almost always don't have that.
    • ang_cire 2y ago
      I think the rule is more that a senior dev will have picked up specialized knowledge that they themselves will target in their job applications, because specialized knowledge positions pay more. So while they may also have the generic skills that could get them hired into an unspecialized role, they're likely not applying for those.
      • mystified5016 2y ago
        You're just repeating the same assertion that senior devs are specialists, which is not true. Not all generalists choose to, or even can specialize. They don't cease to exist once they've accrued enough experience. Nor does having a lot of experience mean you're specialized in any one thing. You can be senior, have loads of experience, and still be a generalist.
        • ang_cire 2y ago
          I'm not saying they secretly are working as specialists, I'm saying that knowledge accrual is never perfectly even across skills. Whatever company you work at has their specific set of tools, and the longer you work on them the more you'll know about those tools (i.e. have specialized knowledge), and not the tools in other shops. And even within that list, you'll know more about some of those tools than others. At a certain point, you would be capable of fulfilling a specialist role in those tools, whether you choose to apply for one or not. When people say specialists, what they mean is SMEs hired to do one specific, specialized role. You can be an SME in something and be hired into a generalist role, or a generalist hired into a specialist role. Whether you are a specialist or a generalist is down to your job role, not your skills. An SME in e.g. reverse engineering who quit IT and now runs a llama farm/ cafe (the dream) is not an RE specialist, they're a llama farmer.
• sroussey 2y ago
  Rare are the job openings for experienced generalists.
  • ska 2y ago
    This just isn't true in my experience. A really good experienced generalist can make a huge impact, and many places recognize this.
    • sroussey 2y ago
      I’m an experienced generalist looking, and I can assure you about the job postings. Totally agree on the huge impact, et al. And for available jobs without a job posting, this remains as you say. But when a hiring manager goes to HR/recruiting and a job posting is generated, it is never for a generalist. So, an experienced generalist has to skip over specific postings, simply look at who is hiring at all (or growing headcount as evidenced by other data points), and find a way in to pitch themselves.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • ska 2y ago
        Except for a very narrow set of hyper-specializations, pretty much every experienced hire varies from posting, in my experience. Sometimes you need to hire one of the worldwide N top in X. You probably don’t post this. Most of the rest of the time it’s more nuanced.
  • ang_cire 2y ago
    The jobs aren't rare, but they usually aren't paying as much as an experienced specialist (and certainly not paying more, despite the job covering a larger knowledge area). Since experienced generalists are always still going to have some areas they have more knowledge in than others, I think it leads to them applying for the higher paying specialized positions.
• bobrobpr 2y ago
  Generalist here. No where do we see jobs for this, Consultant is appropriate. All about the people you know.
  • lolinder 2y ago
    Generalist here. They don't list jobs saying "generalist", but most companies with small to medium (<200) engineering orgs very much require generalists even if they don't know it yet. Most of the time if you walk in with a wide set of abilities and a willingness to use them and you'll have plenty of chances to do so.
    • marcosdumay 2y ago
      They need generalists. But most small and medium companies pretty much require only specialists.
• zdragnar 2y ago
  In my own mentoring and team building experience, your assessment regarding juniors and generalists is correct. Specialism vs generalism is very much a mindset of a person and not strictly dependent on their past experience. I suspect it has much more instead to do with their ability and willingness to build a mental abstraction behind the concrete implementation they have experience with. To refine the conceit: A specialist will see only the tool, but a generalist will see the way the tool solves a specific problem and get an idea for how other tools can solve it. I'm being a little hard on specialists here; a good specialist may often have a far more thorough understanding of how to wield their chosen tool and come up with a better solution using it... Assuming they aren't trying to hammer in a screw, of course.