3 ms·

I agree with the premise of this article (if you wanna get paid, specialise) as it strongly echoes my own, perhaps limited, experience. I am a generalist. I li

I agree with the premise of this article (if you wanna get paid, specialise) as it strongly echoes my own, perhaps limited, experience. I am a generalist. I like being able to solve problems across a wide spectrum of fields. Working at a startup for the last three years has given me plenty of time for that. The flipside is that I have not had much opportunity to specialise. I take pride in being comfortable diving into anything. However this has meant I don't have DEEP knowledge of a specialist. At a previous job, I was able to dig really deep on Solr and build some expertise. In the intervening years however most of that has become way outdated. Also I've found (in an admittedly limited sample size of interviews) that jobs seeking "full stack" developers tend to really be seeking someone to fulfill a specialised role but ALSO be comfortable moving up and down the stack as the need arises. So obviously in my next job I've been looking for more established organizations where my opportunity to specialise in something I enjoy is greater. I think I've found one and am quite excited about it.

gsarrica 11y ago
I know many companies who would rather have someone like you. Someone who they can give a problem to and they know you can solve it because of your wide knowledge base. "Sorry we can't give this problem to Bob to solve because all he knows is tech X." This is worth a lot to some people. It's also not that you know many things, it's that you can learn other things easily and quickly. (without training) The hard part is finding the right place to work at. Many large corporations are looking for a square peg for a square hole.
- mattdeboard 11y ago
  Exactly on all that you just said. There are places but they are hard to find. The intersection of "looking for a generalist" and "doing interesting and/or meaningful work" is tiny.
ivanhoe 11y ago
Additional problem for a senior full-stack devs is that you'll usually be assigned at solving various tricky issues, and even when you get to dig deeply into something and get a decent expertise on that niche, it's very likely that as soon as you setup everything you'll have move to work on something else, usually completely unrelated. After a few months of working on something else you'll almost completely forget the most of those little insights and details that you previously learned, and you'll be back at the start...

gsarrica 11y ago

I know many companies who would rather have someone like you. Someone who they can give a problem to and they know you can solve it because of your wide knowledge base. "Sorry we can't give this problem to Bob to solve because all he knows is tech X." This is worth a lot to some people. It's also not that you know many things, it's that you can learn other things easily and quickly. (without training) The hard part is finding the right place to work at. Many large corporations are looking for a square peg for a square hole.

mattdeboard 11y ago
Exactly on all that you just said. There are places but they are hard to find. The intersection of "looking for a generalist" and "doing interesting and/or meaningful work" is tiny.

ivanhoe 11y ago

Additional problem for a senior full-stack devs is that you'll usually be assigned at solving various tricky issues, and even when you get to dig deeply into something and get a decent expertise on that niche, it's very likely that as soon as you setup everything you'll have move to work on something else, usually completely unrelated. After a few months of working on something else you'll almost completely forget the most of those little insights and details that you previously learned, and you'll be back at the start...