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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)

#121

Post by game_the0ry »

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…

So if I were to apply this to my career, I should be a T-shaped engineer, right? :P

Joking aside, I love this comment.

To expand on this further - maybe the question of generalist vs specialist is not the right question. Rather, I come to this conclusion when exploring that topic - adapt to the environment.

So, the 3-step plan to become successful at life (TM):

1. understand what it takes to be successful in the current environment

2. adapt yourself to be successful in the current environment

3. understand that your environment will change, so iterate over time by going back to step 1

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

#122

Post by bumby »

dharmach wrote: post #99
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…

Does it mean the roles of husband and wife, which were specialized before, are generalized now due to unstable marriages?

I know you’re being downvoted but wouldn’t this be indicative of an unstable economy not an unstable marriage?

E.g., both parties may have to work and do household duties because a one-salary household is much harder to manage financially now due to wages, lack of employment stability etc.

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

#123

Post by ghaff »

systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Someone told me you gotta have a "T shaped" skillset. Well, how else could it be? I've never met any one who is just a straight line deep. Everyone is is an upside down triangle with multiple spikes at the bottom (their specializations) otherwise you couldn't have gained the specialized knowledge without learning the general stuff. But that's a stretch, let's not deduce someone's career into a couple of difference sh…

There clearly is a spectrum though.

A professor at a research university is almost certainly more specialized than a science writer, at least insofar as the science is concerned.

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

#124

Post by neonological »

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 engineering.

So for example, if you’re good at:

machine learning and writing compilers,

doing operating system development,

front end development with react,

OpenGL/Vulcan development with c++,

Database development.

then you are a generalist.

Generalists are truly rare. specialists in compiler development are also rare. Specialists in web development are abundant. Practically every show HN is some sort of website.

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

#125

Post by tobmlt »

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…

We have this in physical engineering too: a robust design continues to perform well away from its optimum state configuration, on-design state, etc.

Something in a deep minimum may well go to heck when y’all he situation changes just a little bit.

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

#126

Post by scsilver »

bsldld wrote: post #118

I don't know where I read this, but few years ago someone was advising students on what they should do to survive professionally. And the answer he gave was: Master one field, and that advise would have been enough for past generations. But for the present and coming generations the answer is, master one field but have at least some knowledge of other(2-3) fields that you think(from your general knowledge) are import…

Alternatively, try to find an industry where your calcified skillset and knowledge remain valuable for 20+ years if possible. These seem to be more on the business and finance side rather than engineering side of things.

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

#127

Post by notagoodidea »

screye wrote: post #115

I am a generalist to the extreme, and I kind of hate it. * For non-job stuff I am a human encyclopedia. Within tech, I am quite resourceful when it comes to the meta, but am never the go-to person for a particular task. * Did MechE -> CS -> ML.... so have a generalists technical education. * I have done meaty projects in all of Vision, NLP, ML for systems, Computational social science, HealthML at production/publisha…

I am right there (those moments before finding the safe-space) looking for a job and it's no good to be a generalist with a almost junior profile. I have worked in different industries at the same time being a researcher doing data analysis on remote sensing data for agriculture and environment and manager of 5 people team in a bar bootstrapping it from me alone to five people ; working on public health and malaria and being a project analyst for start-up in a start-up. The last three years, I wore so many hat just because I was feeling constrained to specialized in one job. As a result, looking for a job outside of my network in another country puts me in competition with people with 3y of work in only one specialization in one field. The imposter syndrome keeps growing as the time pass and I get more refusal but I know that it will be ok when a door will open.

I assume it will take more time, more selling and sharpen some teeth before getting there. Thanks for the advice and the perspectives of a possible future.

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

#128

Post by jbluepolarbear »

ghaff wrote: post #116
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…

It's also something of a continuum. I was an IT industry analyst working for a small firm. This made me acutely aware of consciously picking a point on that continuum. We definitely tended to be more generalist than analysts at big firms who knew narrow areas inside out--and therefore we were better at drawing connections between different topics. By the same token, we needed to be narrow enough to have genuinely dee…

There are certainly times when I have to be okay not knowing the whole picture of what I’m working on. I think most problems when broken down enough start to have very simple, similar solutions, or some combination. So if you don’t understand x technology as a whole, you may know a lot about the he individual aspects of the technology.

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

#129

Post by amelius »

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…

No, a generalist is someone who can't do all those things. They just know a little about all those fields.

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

#130

Post by planet-and-halo »

game_the0ry wrote: post #121
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…

So if I were to apply this to my career, I should be a T-shaped engineer, right? :P Joking aside, I love this comment. To expand on this further - maybe the question of generalist vs specialist is not the right question. Rather, I come to this conclusion when exploring that topic - adapt to the environment. So, the 3-step plan to become successful at life (TM): 1. understand what it takes to be successful in the curr…

Honestly as a human being I think you also have to be careful what you're optimizing for. This is a nice framework if you're thinking about survival and to some degree career, but as human beings we also have a very complex psychology and those problems are mostly "solved" to some degree for many of us. Money and careers are obviously important to some extent, especially if you're struggling to pay rent or eat, but beyond that if this is the only framework guiding your life, you could easily make a bunch of money and still end up miserable. Treating ourselves as economic units maximizing utility I suspect is a big part of what has exacerbated societal ills like alienation and depression.
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