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>And "I could be productive with any of those languages" is a very bad sales pitch. People don't want a generalist. Which people? I'm not asking this to be pro
by azanar 18y ago
>And "I could be productive with any of those languages" is a very bad sales pitch. People don't want a generalist.
Which people? I'm not asking this to be provocative, but this one of those points where a lot of people seem to have strong opinions, both in blogs and off-line, and the sides seem pretty balanced in size. Even the advertisements seem split between very specialized work, and a company that just wants someone who is intelligent, for whatever internal value of intelligent they choose. The most notable characteristic I've seen for tending toward either side of wanting a specialist is the company's size.
My own thoughts on this are torn, but tend toward one of the sides.
On one hand, I can understand needing someone who is highly specialized in something simply because it takes so long to become highly specialized in it. Usually, this has much less to do with the language, though, and much more to do with the domain of the problem needing code to solve.
On the other hand, the claim that someone can hit the ground running if only they specialized in the particular language du jour is completely bogus. There is far more to understanding a system than understanding the language it was written in, and learning whatever technology they based the system on will disappear into the noise compared to trying to understand what they wrote on top of it if the system is of any size.
I can imagine that, in a lot of cases, a generalist would be able to get up to speed nearly as fast as a specialist. More importantly, they would be able to adapt to inevitable change far better than a specialist; the one thing that they perhaps specialize in is learning and drawing parallels. I think this skill is way undervalued in most development teams when hiring.
And all this specialization goes out the window when the system gets iterated to a new platform, and they fire the specialists, hire on an entire new set, and then become stunned again when these new people don't come in able to be maximally productive on the first day. I don't know that I'd want to work for someone who wants to hire people this way.
You'll forgive me for pontificating for a second here, but usually when I see the call for "specialize, specialize," it is from someone who is looking themselves to find a very small niche, negotiate a massive salary based on their specialized knowledge, and live the good life once they have cashed out their knowledge capital in a few years. I'm not implying that the parent commenter holds this philosophy, but I've never seen this work. Either the niche vanishes or becomes less relevant, or they get thrown to the curb when the company "re-specializes" the IT group.
- sokoloff 18y agoInterview situation: "What do you want to do/what are you passionate about? What motivated you to apply to this job?" "It's not SAP, and I don't like doing SAP, so I was very happy to apply for any non-SAP job." Fail. (Keep reading please; there's some non-LOLcats level of discussion below) This is an industry where lots of non-traditional backgrounds can succeed. (My degree is in mechanical engineering; I haven't made enough from working as a Mech E to buy a cup of coffee.) I've worked with or currently have people on my team with non-technical degrees, college dropouts, and one that never finished high school. Assuming OP wants to code, the solution is not going back to school, but rather finding a job as a not-quite entry level non-SAP coder. But I know what we pay our SAP consultants, and in this economy, you're looking at a steep decline in take-home to go from 3-4 years SAP experience to entry-level coder in Foo language. That may very well be the more significant hurdle, esp if you've built a life around a relatively high level of income. In sharp agreement with azanar though, I think the best people I've worked with are generalists over time and specialists in the moment. I've had the luxury of working with a great team that's been (with additions and deletions to the group, and mergers/acquisitions/voluntary move to new startups) working a 4 different companies over the span of 12 years. Along the way, we've gone from Tcl and C++ on Solaris, through C++/COM/COM+/DCOM using DB2 and mainframe DBs, and now to an all MSFT .Net/MS-SQL (with a little MySQL at the edges) platform. None of us have had substantial issues moving from one platform to the next, so in that sense you could say we're generalists. But in each position, we spend 3-5 years deeply specializing and getting to know all the corners of the platform. Our sales pitch applying to the current place back in 2003 wasn't "We hate our current gig consulting and we're only here because Merrill Lynch has clicked on golden handcuffs that just unlocked. They want us to stay, we can't imagine having our souls crushed one more day, so please get us out!" All of that was true, but the focus wasn't on what CurrentCo could do for us, it was about what we could do for CurrentCo. 6 years later (with an IPO along the way), both sides are very happy about the situation!
- mechanical_fish 18y agoI think the best people I've worked with are generalists over time and specialists in the moment. Precisely, and very well worded. Being a generalist is a great strategy, but not a great job-search tactic. Hiring managers would like to hire someone who will be a generalist over time, but they need someone who is able and willing to solve the specific problem that's bothering them this year.