Specialist or a Generalist?
Which of these do you think has a better scope in your line of work?
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Heard of T-shaped expertise?
Nope. Does it mean starting as a specialist and later turning into a generalist?
No. It means having good knowledge about a variety of things on a horizontal level. And deep expertise in one of those areas on a vertical level.
If you don't know what horizontal or vertical integration means, google it😛
What's a Generalist?
Someone who kind of has surface level knowledge of many aspects but doesn't have deep level knowledge in any one aspect. Like a full stack dev who knows basic frontend, backend, ml, dev-ops, etc. but doesn't have deep knowledge in any one of these aspects
Grass is greener where you water it
If by line of work you mean company type: Generalists for early stage, specialists for post-early stage
You need to be a specialist in one area and generalist for other.
Basically be damn good at what you’re trained at and be quick to pick up new things outside your core competence that’s the deadly combination in my opinion.
Above is the answer. Have a deep knowledge of one language/framework, and understand how it works internally. This gives you an idea of how things work or should work at a large scale.
Now, with this learning, explore new frameworks and technologies and understand how these work. Compare, if possible, how both are different from each other. Why do some things work in a certain way in one technology and another way in some other technology.
0-1 generalists
1-100 specialists
Specialist if you want to be an employee and rise to the top of corporate ladder. Generalist if you want to go through the startup route.
disagree
middle management starts the transition into pure generalist roles. above that layer it's nearly 100% generalist.
specialist roles (which are almost always IC roles) at the top rungs exist but are incredibly competitive as there are very few.
whoever can take an objective and deliver has better scope
this generalist/specialist thing is platonification. some objectives require breadth, some require depth. segment the objectives not the person.