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Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
101–110 of 159 posts
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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 think they have some secret that the upstarts are missing, a special sauce that no "true solution" built by "true engineers" would be without. And then their overengineered designed by committee and compromise solutions stumble out of the garage and collapse in a heap. Meanwhile, those things built by people more motivated by a desire and a passion than by signaling their expertise soar past and into fields and uses their designers never imagined.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#103I'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.
> I can tell that my main disadvantage is the constant, crippling imposter syndrome.
IMO, that may in fact be an advantage. The biggest pitfall generalists face is Dunning-Krueger. They rush into a new field, think they know everything, and get burned by their overconfidence. Generalists can be very powerful, but only if they understand the boundaries of the unknown unknowns.
That requires a high level of epistemic humility, which often feels like imposter syndrome from the inside.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#104I always feel like these types of posts are too kind to generalists. Maybe that's just because I am one and I am falling for the greener grass. It's true I've done well in my career, but I've never felt particularly competent. I can do a half assed job as a manager, developer, product owner, and salesman, but I am not any better at those tasks than someone who specializes in doing those things. I could argue that I h…
Another way of thinking about this is absolute returns vs risk-adjusted returns. Maybe as a specialist you’d have higher absolute returns, but the probability that your speciality dies may mean your risk adjusted returns are higher for generalists.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#105The 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…
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…
I've been wondering something like this lately in relation to apparent species die-offs - we view and catalogue numbers in a timeframe that makes sense on an immediate human scale.
What if species have always gone through collapse/regrowth cycles and we happen to be viewing things through a too finely-focused lens that skews interpretation?
I'm not trying to make light of Humankind's horrific environmental impact, rather checking that we're not simply missing a fundamental natural law and so misinterpreting things.
This came to the fore of my mind particularly recently, listening to a podcast wherein part was talking about a rebound in the population of Peregrine Falcons, with them taking up homes across London.
- ed lol at me - 'taking up homes across London' sounds like the falcons are gentrifying. I meant, obviously, 'their populations are growing across London'.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#106When this question comes up, I always think of Leonardo da Vinci. The man was perhaps the least focused genius in history and it's a wonder he got anything done at all. He spent years experimenting with science, engineering, new painting techniques, and various other things that went nowhere.
Yet, today he's probably one of the top five most successful artists of all time, largely for a handful of paintings.
So, when it comes to the arts, it seems like you can do both. Be a generalist, but make at least one work that is a masterpiece.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#107I always feel like these types of posts are too kind to generalists. Maybe that's just because I am one and I am falling for the greener grass. It's true I've done well in my career, but I've never felt particularly competent. I can do a half assed job as a manager, developer, product owner, and salesman, but I am not any better at those tasks than someone who specializes in doing those things. I could argue that I h…
I have a very good friend who leaned into C++ hard about 10 years ago. He's now sitting on one of the languages sub-committees. I think he'll never have any shortage of employment opportunities doing work that he finds interesting. At the same time, I leaned into Ruby hard. I'm now leading a team that writes JavaScript and, quite frankly, I do not have the same confidence. I'm not even confident that I'll be writing…
Interesting perspective. I'm on the other end of the coin. Work with mostly C++. Looking at job boards, there are endless opportunities for Ruby and JavaScript positions, not so much for C++ these days. JavaScript will probably be fine for as long as the web exists.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#108I doubt, there's such a thing as a real generalist, that knows SW development, negotiation, history of Italy, international politics, engine design, ... to the same level of depth. When we speak about successful generalists, they are still quite specialized. They might know some data analysis (maybe limited by Excel and VB macros), some teamwork skills, some marketing/sales/product ownership knowledge, some competiti…
I think these sort of people exist, but they are likely quite rare. I think it'd lack humility to claim I am one of those people, but I will say that I found several other people who were like me but more in this regard during my career by trying many different hobbies and identifying people I respect and work with that share these hobbies. The Gallup StrengthsFinder personality assessment has two strengths, "Learner" (breadth) and "Ideation" (depth), people who have both are rare and perhaps jokingly called "certified know-it-alls", but it's been my experience that this is pretty much true and some people do have the personality to pursue many varied disconnected interests at depth. It's also one reason I believe STEAM is a real thing, because I've met many folks like this that are as gifted in artistry as they are in (physical) engineering and mechanics, as they are in software development. I certainly lack the gifts in artistry myself.
I don't think I've ever met anyone who has depth in every field of study, but I don't think this is a fair requirement to be considered a true generalist.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#109Generalists can easily adapt. Adapting is key for survival.
Re: Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
#110Specialization vs. generalization isn’t what has driven my success, but my overall ability to adapt. At times in my professional life I have been a very narrow specialist - domain expert even. At other times I have greatly benefited from having more wider knowledge of multiple areas and being able to synthesize among them. It just depends.
The biggest issue I have had with people is when they get to a point where they don’t feel they have to learn anything new - “I shouldn’t have to at this point”. Always makes me laugh! You should never stop learning - I’ve seen that attitude pigeonhole and submarine otherwise smart people. If you want to be miserable, just let that mindset start to creep in and dominate your thought processes :/