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Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

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Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#81

Post by pdimitar »

Obviously the world and the economy are big enough for both but at least in terms of programming, I've observed the following:

The more senior programmer I become (both in age and skills), the less I can actually focus on a single programming task. I am expected to know a metric ton of tooling for 2000 separate purposes. So I learned to quickly master tools just good enough. Same goes for frameworks (which has been to the detriment of the projects sometimes, sadly; there are things you cannot afford to half-ass).

Basically, as a tech generalist and a polyglot, my job is to assemble bricks into walls into houses. Rarely do I get to write the perfect brick or glue. I am much more a plumber and architectural worker than anything else.

So IMO if you are not in a single company for most of your career and want to be competitive, you have to be a generalist.

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#82

Post by korax_nyx »

I've been a generalist all my life, I don't think I could be otherwise because I love to learn above all things.

That's a curse and a blessing at my forties.

And I don't know who is more successful, but certainly I can tell that my main disadvantage is the constant, crippling imposter syndrome. Because I know some things about many things, but above all, I know how much I don't know yet.

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#83

Post by irjustin »

ignoramous wrote: post #72
cjblomqvist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In economic theory this is well known, and related to S-curves. First innovation (requires integration, which requires generalists/people spanning disciplines), then specialization and price war / commoditization

Interesting. So, as the s-curve begins to climb up and systems demand specialists, then, is it the case that they'd be paid more and hired at higher levels than generalists? Which is to say, specialists tend to get hired once stability is achieved but also tend to capture more value / status than the generalists that helped the system navigate the s-curve? Alternatively, are all senior hires at stable systems like FA…

Generally agreed, but you're looking at stable FAANGs.

If you look at startups, for the most part, need lots of senior generalists who have a can-do attitude to 'just figure it out'.

Ideally, those generalists get rewarded w/ stock (side stepping the trigger topic on purpose) because they joined close to the ground floor. Most startups don't need and/or can't afford specialists until around Series B. Again ideally, if you needed a specialist early, you've got one on the founding team.

Many exceptions to the above statement, but it fits this topic's narrative.

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#84

Post by indymike »

It's not generalist vs. specialist, it's capacity for learning and adaptability that really matters.

When things are steady state, learning capacity and adaptability don't really matter. You do the same thing, the same way, every day. When change is in play, and it doesn't matter if that is technical or organizational, those who can learn faster and change behaviors to meet the change are going to outperform.

I once was given a team of interns and newly minted developers. In 90 days, we were able to write an entire new ETL system while the legacy team struggled to just keep their steady-eddie system running. We replaced 10 years of code and a kill and fill system with a fully differential pipeline that reduced load on the upstream system by 98%. Literally from millions of documents to process every night to a few thousand. Why? Our team was hired for capacity to learn and ability to adapt. The old guard was hired for experience and knowledge. Yes, they knew their stuff. The problem was they were not able to deal with change at all. The best part? Most of the team had never even heard of ETL and knew zero SQL.

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#85

Post by whoiskevin »

indymike wrote: post #84

It's not generalist vs. specialist, it's capacity for learning and adaptability that really matters. When things are steady state, learning capacity and adaptability don't really matter. You do the same thing, the same way, every day. When change is in play, and it doesn't matter if that is technical or organizational, those who can learn faster and change behaviors to meet the change are going to outperform. I once…

Was the legacy team free from daily responsibilities of maintaining the system or were you at an unfair advantage because you only had to work on new development?

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#86

Post by mratsim »

sidpatil wrote: post #10
planet-and-halo wrote: post #2

The best thing I ever read on this topic came from biology. In "The Diversity of Life," E.O. Wilson describes how specialist species thrive in stable environments. The stability allows them to evolve "deeply" into a niche and outcompete any species less specialized for that same niche. So if I'm really great at plucking fruit from tall trees, and you suck at it, I win. In unstable environments, however—say all of tho…

My nickname for this phenomenon is the "robustness/efficiency spectrum." In this case, it would be the robust generalists and the efficient specialists on opposite ends of the spectrum. (I'm not sure it has to be a two-dimensional spectrum in all scenarios —I believe there may be cases in which robustness and efficiencies are at least partially orthogonal/independent to each other.) Taleb discusses this in his writin…

In reinforcement learning which is used for things like AlphaGo, there is a similar duality called "exploration vs exploitation":

- do you keep searching in breadth for new avenues

- or is it time to dive in depth in what you found so far.

And this is even optimized through something called "regret".

- example: https://rlss.inria.fr/files/2019/07/exploration_lazaric_1.pd...

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#88

Post by fishbone »

Here’s a quote I like:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love[1][2]

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#89

Post by aero142 »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #11
irjustin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a going theory on this - that it's a yoyo between generalization and specialization. A particular topic starts with generalists but as time progresses and stability (i.e. a path worth pursuing) becomes apparent, specialization is needed to eek out more performance gains. Then after a while, that particular area gets disrupted because there's a fundamental shift in landscape and the cycle repeats because the…

Pardon me for a bad (and generalist) habit. I’m not correcting your spelling for any reason other than to give you a free Scrabble tip: it’s eke. And yep, you’re spot on.

This is the most pleasantly written spelling correction I have ever seen.

Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

#90

Post by strgcmc »

whoiskevin wrote: post #85
indymike wrote: post #84

It's not generalist vs. specialist, it's capacity for learning and adaptability that really matters. When things are steady state, learning capacity and adaptability don't really matter. You do the same thing, the same way, every day. When change is in play, and it doesn't matter if that is technical or organizational, those who can learn faster and change behaviors to meet the change are going to outperform. I once…

Was the legacy team free from daily responsibilities of maintaining the system or were you at an unfair advantage because you only had to work on new development?

This is probably the only way that anything gets done though. Someone has to keep the legacy system running, warts and all, while someone else has the free space to work on something better. The only thing that's misguided is comparing the two as if they were tasked with the same goal (they were not).

But, one can speculate that if the situation was reversed, and the interns and newbies were forced to maintain the old system and the old hands were given carte blanche to write a new system, that maybe they wouldn't have been as creative or open-minded about it. Or maybe they'd have deeper insights based on their experience? Who knows?

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