Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019) • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by jjk166 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

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…

The problem with this line of thinking is that there is a distinction between you and your current skillset. In nature a finch can't deliberately change the shape of its beak, but a human can alter their behavior. A fast learner can be deeply specialized in terms of knowledge during times of stability but then quickly switch over to being a generalist when conditions change - on the other hand someone who took a long time to become a jack of all trades may struggle just as hard as anyone else to adapt to a genuinely new development. When most of us picture a specialist, we think of someone with perhaps an advanced degree or years of experience in a narrow field, while a generalist has invested much less time in a niche, but really a specialist is someone inflexible in their thinking and focused on details whereas the true generalist is someone more focused on broad concepts and open to new ideas, regardless of career history.

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

#132

Post by neonological » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #129

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.

Everyone knows a little about all these things. Heck the computer science curriculum at every university pretty much makes it so all students know a little of everything.

Does that make every CS student a generalist? No. The generalist must have competent capability to be hired in several of those fields.

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

#133

Post by WJW » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #95

WJW wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all clear to me why a T-shaped individual would be better than "square" individual of the same depth (ie something with more overall surface area).

I'd say the assumption is that your square shape would sacrifice breadth for depth across their breadth. The assumption is that time is fixed and you can only learn and master a certain amount of material to a certain degree. At some point you're going to sacrifice something for the other because time is fixed. There's probably another element to consider: memory, learning rate, and rate of change of a given industry…

The assumption that somebody needs to have sacrificed breadth for depth is only true in the hypothetical case where you need to choose between two applicants with exactly the same amount of experience. In practice, you will encounter candidates who are just better at everything than the other candidate. That is something experience can give you.

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

#134

Post by glial » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #131

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…

The problem with this line of thinking is that there is a distinction between you and your current skillset. In nature a finch can't deliberately change the shape of its beak, but a human can alter their behavior. A fast learner can be deeply specialized in terms of knowledge during times of stability but then quickly switch over to being a generalist when conditions change - on the other hand someone who took a long…

> The problem with this line of thinking

I don't think it's a problem. It's just that specialization can happen in skill AND in genetic adaptability to the environment. We think of skill and genetics as separate things, but in this context it can be helpful to think of them as existing along a continuum of how we learn about the environment and adapt to it. Genetic adaptations 'learn' about the environment over multiple generations, and behavior changes happen within a single generation.

So for example, the finch is specialized exactly because it can't change its beak, and the human is a generalist exactly because it can alter its behavior. I think you could argue that any human behavioral 'specialization' is still probably less adapted to any given environment than animals who evolved for a million years to be suited to that environment.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

neonological wrote: post #132

amelius wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Everyone knows a little about all these things. Heck the computer science curriculum at every university pretty much makes it so all students know a little of everything. Does that make every CS student a generalist? No. The generalist must have competent capability to be hired in several of those fields.

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by iwangulenko » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

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-trades types.

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

#137

Post by sunstone » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

Mr. Musk appears to be half and half.

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

#138

Post by Dudeman112 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #17

Snoozle wrote: post #3

I 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 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?

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

#139

Post by Dudeman112 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

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.

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

#140

Post by awful » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

Never bored, I went from basic electronics and microprocessor to troubleshoot mainframes at bit/op code level, replacing heads and aligning disks, to admin'ing new then Silicon Graphics, Sun Unix and VMS and large scale databases, analog and digital research instrumentation (NMR, among others, RF, cryo, even writing minor pulse sequences and HW to control laser excitation of molecules, among others), new then IP networks, IBM Server and NT and automating rollout of thousands clients, email (cc:Mail international) architectures, the early network security configs and proseltyzing, a hospital systems ATM (not money machine, a net arch) mesh network, and later specializing study in computer science/information systems and all that, Apache servers, and automating certain new aircraft systems. The magic was being generalist, understanding fundamental concepts. You cannot believe how upset some people, who locked into their narrow fields, became when I was able to move around so easily(? - it was a lot of work though, but it was always a hobby so never a job). Now retired and following/studying NMR technology applied to quantum computing to leverage my way into the algorithms, and ESP32. that is how the generalist wins in many ways, in my opinion; leveraging fundementals to do interesting things. But I do find that without the steady back pressure, I tend to wander a bit much into the wilds.