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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)

#141

Post by BossingAround »

ozim wrote: post #32

Well T-shaped individuals have greatest chance of success. What rubs me the wrong way is the false dichotomy like one can only be a specialist or a generalist. It is always presented as if for example chess players would not even know how to eat. There was a joke in the "Top Gear" about "Stig" racing driver that would fall to the ground if taken out of a car. There is also much more to it because world is complex. Fo…

> Well T-shaped individuals have greatest chance of success.

Personally, I feel like T-shaped individuals are a chimera. I don't know anyone whom I'd considered T-shaped. Maybe it's just my location. I have noticed that even the highest placed engineers at my companies, and I'm talking world leaders in certain areas, often do not like to venture even a little bit outside of their specialization.

> For example I am software developer so for business people I am a specialist. But I am also a "full stack developer" where for my fellow developers I am a generalist. Then I mostly specialize in .NET and Angular.

This I can absolutely agree with. I would not call that a T-shaped person; rather, to me, the above is a generalist. I do think that this depends on a point of view. But T-shaped person signifies that a person has one deep specialization. I'd say that having a deep specialization goes against going wide.

From my observation, I've never seen a person who'd have both deep specialization and be comfortable with other technologies on the side.

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

#142

Post by BossingAround »

fishbone wrote: post #88

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…

I have honestly no idea what to think of the quote. I am simply baffled, unable to decide whether it's an utter drivel or amazingly profound.

Thank you for sharing.

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

#143

Post by michaelcampbell »

iwangulenko wrote: post #136
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…

Tech recruiter here. What you are saying fits neatly with my observation that during a bull market the specialists tend to do great, amazing compensation, lots of contracting options. When the market turns these are the first to be downsized because they are very expensive. The generalists are more sought after because firms try to produce the same output with fewer resources, and for this you need the jack-of-all-tr…

I've also found that in suitably large enterprisey orgs, the generalists are the first to be let go under a cost crunch because no matter what they do, they have in their stable of people someone else who can do it better. And its very, VERY rare that a generalist is actually DOING more than 1 or 2 things, no matter how many things they CAN be doing.

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

#144

Post by sophacles »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #138
jbluepolarbear wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it’s perspective, I’m a career long generalist and I feel confident that I can be put on any team and preform at or better than the average specialist in the same position. I’ve backed this up with every position I’ve had and have built a network of people that know and trust when I say I can do something. I think that’s more important than any specialist because if I don’t know an answer or how to solve some…

If a generalist is better at X than an X specialist, do you even get to call them an X specialist?

Yes. Specialization does not imply quality.

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

#145

Post by killjoywashere »

I think it's worth keeping in mind that specialization is in the eye of the beholder. Among physicians, I'm a specialist (a pathologist). In the pathology community I'm a generalist (I don't have subspecialty training), but I'm also quite specialized in that I mainly work in AI (thanks to an undergrad in physics and a lot of time spent playing with computers). AI turns out to be something few physicians of any type have the mathematical training for because the prerequisites for medical school stop at integral calculus.

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

#146

Post by blaser-waffle »

enriquto wrote: post #25
threatofrain wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a restatement of K vs r theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

it doesn't seem so... can't either selection strategies be used independently by specialists and generalists?

Yeah it's not quite a 1-to-1 comparison. Close, and I can see the overlap, but K/r is about low effort spamming vs. high investment intensive building.

Nothing says you can't spam specialist, niche offspring -- works well for certain kids of ants. Likewise you can spam generalist spawn as well, hoping that they'll be well rounded enough to get by in several different scenarios.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #146
enriquto wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't seem so... can't either selection strategies be used independently by specialists and generalists?

Yeah it's not quite a 1-to-1 comparison. Close, and I can see the overlap, but K/r is about low effort spamming vs. high investment intensive building. Nothing says you can't spam specialist, niche offspring -- works well for certain kids of ants. Likewise you can spam generalist spawn as well, hoping that they'll be well rounded enough to get by in several different scenarios.

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by neonological »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #139
neonological wrote: post #124

A lot of programmers think of themselves as generalists because they’ve built web apps in several languages and know both front end and backend development. I disagree. These people are just specialists in web dev. The knowledge within web development is diverse and actually easy to learn but it does not make you a generalist. You are a generalist if you have knowledge about different fields within software engineeri…

I don't think there are many fields out there where you'd need comparatively that much expertise in so many subfields before you got to call yourself a generalist.

I've met people with max competency in 3 separate fields. I've also met people with more competency if you count fields outside of computer science.

I'm not saying they were specialists, I'm saying these people were competent.

Most people are only competent or a specialist in one of these fields.

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

#149

Post by jhoechtl »

herodoturtle wrote: post #41
jhoechtl wrote: post #20

In a devastated economy the generalist, in a highly functional economy the specilist. Now please come up with a measure if an economy is elaborated and functional.

> Now please come up with a measure if an economy is elaborated and functional. A friend once referred me to a "public transport" measure, which might not be the panacea for defining an economy's success, but it's certainly an interesting take. I wish I could find the paper / article (I tried), but in essence, the extent to which an economy has implemented effective public transport can be used as a measure of econom…

Interesting point. The US would be an outlier then?

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

#150

Post by jart »

musingsole wrote: post #102
strgcmc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ol…

Richard Hamming talks of the development of FORTRAN and Algol in his History of Computers talk. He recalls FORTRAN being received as something between an abomination and a stupid trick. Algol, in contrast, was backed by many international groups and is described as "an attempt by the theoreticians to greatly improve FORTRAN" (by way of all their great, formalized knowledge and 'wisdom'). The seasoned experts always t…

> Richard Hamming talks of the development of FORTRAN and Algol in his History of Computers talk. He recalls FORTRAN being received as something between an abomination and a stupid trick.

Interesting. I recently designed an executable format that runs on seven operating systems and I've definitely been getting that vibe from a lot of my colleagues. I try not to take it personally since I feel like some ideas can only be discovered and the will of technology often isn't our own.

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