Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
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Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
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Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#2It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons.
> You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills.
I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that specialists need to do in groups. However, I think a group of specialists will always outperform a lone generalist. Because of that, I imagine specialists are in general more preferable in a company environment.
EDIT: I'm curious if there are people here that have chosen to practice a wide breadth of related skills, as opposed to lasering in to one very specific skill. Do you feel glad/happy about it, or have you regretted it?
EDIT 2: What is a generalist or a specialist is of course very relative. One's specialist is another's generalist. I also get the sense that, in the tech world, what is a specialist today, is a generalist tomorrow. Maybe that's just natural of an expanding industry.
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#3It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…
Ups and downs on being a generalist.
- If I stuck with a focus on database programming from my early career, I would have a very valuable specialty.
- If I stayed more technical I probably would have weathered 2008 with more sanity.
But...
- Being a generalist opened up some international work.
- I met my wife on a career tangent.
- I get bored doing the same thing over and over.
- My last two roles (in a long career) have finally pulled everything together.
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#4It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…
I'm only on my third year of being a programmer, and have worked in fullstack, devops, and academia. Those of my peers that have stuck with one thing seem to be much more easily employed. My resume looks impressive but when they realize I only have a year of experience instead of three in the thing they want, it goes down hill. "But I know all these other things (that you don't care about)!" isn't super useful.
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#5It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…
Undergrad in physics. 7 years in the military. Medical school, self-taught computing (mainly Unix, web stuff, and python), surgical internship, more programming, residency, more programming. Now medical director of a clinical lab with 40 staff and major research in progress, published, overseeing clinical and research employees across 10 timezones, working across 13 time zones, have briefed to highest levels of government. Stayed married and my kids seem to be doing ok.
And the sword of Damocles hangs over my neck ever day. Worth it? Probably, but still not actually clear.
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#6It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…
I'm only on my third year of being a programmer, and have worked in fullstack, devops, and academia. Those of my peers that have stuck with one thing seem to be much more easily employed. My resume looks impressive but when they realize I only have a year of experience instead of three in the thing they want, it goes down hill. "But I know all these other things (that you don't care about)!" isn't super useful.
I imagine the larger the employing organization, the greater the preference for specialists. The extreme example of a small organization, self-employment, is probably the ideal working environment for a generalist.
> "But I know all these other things (that you don't care about)!"
Having the skills be related to each other is also key. If you can't mix the skills in what you're doing, in a way that no 2 specialists can easily coordinate, then that's not very useful.
I think it's a matter of making use of one's advantages, but it's probably true that it's easier for a specialist, if all they have to do is apply to well known organizations for employment, as opposed to starting a new business or applying to startups.
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#7It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…
Generalist because it's in my nature [1] "When environmental conditions change, generalists are able to adapt, but specialists tend to fall victim to extinction much more easily."
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalist_and_specialist_sp...
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#8When I rode my bicycle across the USA from LA to NYC I met a dude named Ryan through WarmShowers. Over pizza and beers at a local joint in Tempe, AZ, Ryan told me about this blog called _Semi-Rad_ - "you don't need to be a rockstar in something, you just need to be semi-rad. Semi-rad people have the most fun, they achieve the most, they experience the spice of life. They're not so caught up in perfection, but they still achieve a degree of greatness."
I approve this message, Darius Foroux, and I encourage others to consider the trade-offs of "perfection" vs. "semi-rad".
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#9Those interested in the generalist/specialist debate could do worse than to read Isaiah Berlin's classic essay on the subject, The Hedgehog and the Fox: https://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/crag/files/2016/06/the_hedgeh...
Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success
#10It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…
I restarted my software development career around 2009 after being at one company too long and after 8 years and 4 job changes, I went from being what for all intents and purposes a junior .Net developer to the dev team lead based solely on knowing the Microsoft stack really well.
At the company where I was the dev lead, I first encountered outside consultants who were there to “help” us transform the company and “move us to the cloud”.
After realizing in hindsight how easy it was being a consultant - in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king - I realized that coming at AWS consultancy from the viewpoint of a software architect with some dev ops experience and some infrastructure experience I could be the two eyed king that may be had just a little blurry vision in one eye.
So, after changing jobs again last year, and taking a slight demotion (not in pay - in responsible) I’m on a four year journey to be a real “full stack consultant”. Someone who knows the front end well enough to talk to the front end guys, middleware (.Net/Node/Python) , databases, Linux, Docker, Devops, netops (at least on AWS) and maybe a project management certification.
There are a few gaps and a few more certifications I need, but I think I should have enough breadth as a consultant for the high paying jobs and enough depth to be your typical “full stack developer” to be able to land a job quickly.
I will see....