I consider myself to be a generalist that specializes in front-end web development. If you are trying to decide between hiring a generalist or specialist, it j

I consider myself to be a generalist that specializes in front-end web development. If you are trying to decide between hiring a generalist or specialist, it just comes down to your resources and the current structure of your team. If you are a startup with little to no funding... generalist. If you are a stable company looking to improve your UI or starting to incorporate new tech (like native mobile dev) into your products....specialist. An Ideal team for me, given ample resources, would be a bunch of specialists supported by 1 - 2 generalist. A specialist will always try and solve problems with the tech that they know. This often leads to maintenance problems due to a blurring of separation of concerns. A specialist will also out perform a generalist when they are given the correct problems to solve. A generalist will know which specialist is the correct one to solve the problem, and can even do some light to medium lifting if a deadline calls for it.