Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?

Maybe the specifics have changed but I'd argue the general sentiment remains valid. And at least half of those specifics still apply.

Yes and no. No, because I think being a generalist has allowed me to offer value and insights that set me apart from others. I like knowing a bit about everything and I think my willingness to learn and explore has worked out really well.

On the flipside, before I moved to my current company, I did struggle with promotions at times because I wasn’t seen as a specialist in any one area. The overall value that I saw in being a generalist and that others used to their advantage wasn’t rewarded the same way as it was for peers who were focused on just one thing.

So I don’t regret it and I do think there is real value in being a generalist. But be prepared to have to work harder to show that value to others.

Heck no I regret nothing.

I can program anything, bring me your dead and I will raise it.

Specializing, that's called a job. Work is work and they have a stack you gotta use, better or worse.

No one can take the hacker out of the hacker though.

My resume in terms of languages basically goes back in time, where I'm "expert" of what I use every day, but what I haven't used for a while I just put "good".

How do you sell yourself as a specialist to a company with a stack? Simple, "I don't know X but I'm keen to learn. I'm sure I can scale up to it". If they pass on you, it wasn't meant to be. As a job, your job is to return higher value than your cost. If you do that within a team, you're a net positive. Whether it's by teaching what you know as an expert, of coming up and scaling up to help wherever you can.

Either way, there are very few stacks that are permanent enough that you could be an expert in the matter for decades. Things simply move too fast.

So get behind any shiny new stack that you fancy and become a subject expert, it might pay the bills in 5 years. If not, you probably learnt transferable skills. At the end of the day, no matter the language, stack, team, we're just all trying to get the computer to do X.

Think about the breadth of your experience with perspective of where you want to land. You sound like a person that likes learning and applying SW tech. That is great for a generalist role or a maybe a CTO of a varied SW tech stack. Is that trajectory where you want to land? If you want to be in a role where you need to be responsible for multi-disciplinary stacks, you don't sound like a generalist. For SW, you do. I hope your experiences line you up for the role you want.

A generalist technologist has a lot of uses. I successfuløy employ myself as a generalist technologist and let Subject matter expert or coders take over when we go deeper into these territories.

Follow your passion for technology it almost cannot go wrong if you learn by being passionate and work in tech.