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Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

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Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#21

Post by zikzak »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #5

I stop when I find a solution to the problem. Most of the time the learning happens along the way, not necessarily in the solution itself but all the things you try and iterate on your journey to the solution. Everything changes in tech by the minute ... but also nothing changes. For web applications it has been HTML, CSS and JS for nearly 30 years. XMLHttpRequest/AJAX came out 25+ years ago. There have been many imp…

I go for "I can understand experts, but not add much to the conversation" as a benchmark for knowing enough to participate in discussions at work. Then I use that "I can solve my immediate problem" method going forward.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#22

Post by Aurornis »

Entirely dependent on the people and projects you’re working on.

If the projects are simple and the people you’re working for or with don’t even know how to do the work themselves, you can be the relative expert with only a shallow knowledge of a subject.

If the people you’re working with are experts or the project is complex, you’re not going to be considered capable at all unless you can demonstrate you have significant experience and understanding on the topic.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#23

Post by antonymoose »

Generally, some amount of production deployments in a tool, language or ecosystem over time. Having an application, any application, being used by X number for Y years will expose you to the frayed edges. Sometimes you dive in on an edge case but that is when you know how deep the ocean is and how shallow your knowledge. That, vague as it is, is the line between generality and specialty in software. When you finally have to peek into specialist issues.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#25

Post by voidhorse »

PeterStuer wrote: post #20

You never know 'enough'. You just have broad interests and see how all things are more interlinked than any one specific branch of knowledge captures. So you naturally wander through a host of subjects rather than exclusively deepdive into a single specialization.

This. Often you'll also put something down for a while only to pick it up again years later, dusting off your old know-how.

Learning is a never-ending process in which progress is not stable and regression also happens. In that sense it is sisyphean.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#26

Post by bluGill »

> with everything in tech changing by the minute

This is only true if you are studying the wrong thing. Irrelevant implementation details change by the minute, but they are irrelevant expect in the very moment you need that detail, so only learn them by repetitive use. Meanwhile the fundamentals do not change, as a generalist you will be looking to learn those so that when you need details you understand what the implementation is doing. As you get older (more experienced) you will start to see how the the latest implementation is change either for the sake of change, or corruption (that is you can convince someone it is innovative and thus make money even though you are making things objectively worse - see touch screens in cars), soon you with be shaking your first at the stars and yelling to the wind how much better it used to be (while ignoring all progress!)

Tech is not changing by the minute. There have been only minor changes since I was in elementary school in the 1980s. 8 bit to 64 bit CPUS are a minor change since they fundamentally do the same thing. We were doing some interesting GUIs in the 1980s. (I'm not old enough to remember the XEROX systems of the 1970s much less tech before then). Learn the fundamentals and things won't be changing fast.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#28

Post by gorjusborg »

I never aspired to be a generalist, but I have come to realize my process has made me into one.

If I had to generalize how I work, I'd say it comes down to:

1. Identify the highest value thing I can work on that is feasible

2. Learn what I need to finish the work. Invest as little time/effort as possible into topics that have not proven to be timeless. Lindy's Law is your guide here.

3. when the solution is good enough, go back to 1.

Being a generalist doesn't mean you aren't an expert in anything. There are topics that I've identified as being so timeless and high value that I've more time and effort into them than others (making me a relative expert, I guess).

For me, it is more about targeting the goals at hand and learning just what I need than setting out to master the tools I like. Over time you will become an expert in the tools you trust.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#29

Post by estimator7292 »

I don't understand the question. One does not simply decide to stop falling down the rabbit hole, you keep going until it stops or you get taken down a different path. Never in my life have I made an active decision to stop learning about any one thing. You learn whatever skill is required to deal with the problem at hand and go on keep learning until you need a new skill or just get distracted.

But also you're making an extremely bad mistake in your thinking here. Being a generalist does not preclude being a master. In fact, I've found that in today's market you must have specializations. Right now I'm selling myself as an electronics engineer and embedded C programmer. But my deepest expertice is C#, where I consider myself to be a fairly high level expert. My current job is writing react native with some EE on the side.

You're trying to actively spread yourself even thinner which is a huge error. Knowing almost nothing about everything is not useful today, we just use AI for that. You need some real, solid skills to work from. You also need to be able to be a specialist and do specialist work because you are not likely to find a good generalist role. There aren't many such roles and they're getting harder to find.

But all in all my answer is no. There is no point where you should stop learning any one thing. Follow your passions and what's interesting. Finding a subject you're interested in and spending a ton of time learning about it isn't a bad thing. That's how you figure out what you like and how you build real skills. You should follow particular subjects into mastery because a generalist without any specialization is not actually very useful unless you're a world class engineer.

It's clichéd, but genuinely follow whatever subjects make you happy and find a way to make that work for you.

Re: Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?

#30

Post by luismedel »

I consider myself a generalist, but, to be honest, I don't remotely think that I "know a lot of everything". In fact, I suffer about the contrary :-)

About the "when do I say 'I know enough'"...well, never. I just follow my curiosity and it's infinite ramifications. I loss/gain interests about very diverse topics in a somewhat short amount of time.

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