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Often we cherish specialists quoting "Jack of all trades, master of none". Curiously enough, the full version of the original has a twist: “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." https://www.theodysseyonline.com/7-phrases-youve-been-misquo...
I’m a generalist and I would 100% recommend it over being a specialist because you get to see the whole picture. You start to notice patterns across different programming paradigms that make you a better developer. You learn techniques to quickly teach yourself and learn about the problem domain which translate into other parts of your life besides computers. I’ve taught myself how to work on cars using deductive log…
What I understood is this author's definition of a generalist is someone who expands his scope beyond just programming. To things like design, business development, hr management, recruiting, raising funds etc. Generally, it may not be so common to find an individual who's almost equally as passionate about all of these things. In the end we got limited time on this planet and can't learn everything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - 1 bronze medal Olympian who has single-handedly medaled in swimming, running, and gymnastics? Has anyone ever achieved this? It sounds like you're saying you would rather hire 1 person that doesn't exist rather than hire 3 people that do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_athletes_with_Olympi... Doesn't look like it.
Google hires tons of generalists. The reasoning here is very flawed. Hiring specialists is higher variance. They could be amazing for your company or it could be that you need to do something slightly different and they are mostly useless. Generalists are safer but with less upside. Of course this dichotomy is false anyway. Everyone exists on a spectrum. No one has only a single skill at “max level” and no one has ev…
Google needs to hire generalists because they need to hire any good developer as there's a talent shortage (or at least a talent identification shortage).
And most generalists are generalists because that's what their jobs have required, and can become specialists shortly.
Finally, as a side node, a benefit of being a generalist that the article doesn't mention: you can cross apply good ideas from different domains. You can say "X language does Y -- maybe we could apply that idea to our existing code base. "
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not because you are comfortable doing something that it is a good idea for anyone to be like that, we are all different. And we need specialists, how will you build a new microprocessor without having any specialist in microprocessors ?
It depends what you mean by "specialist in microprocessors". There is enough publicly / academically available information about CPU architecture / microarchitecture to become highly knowledgable on the subject without ever having worked on a CPU before. But once you get to the level of implementation, physical design, and manufacturing, you need real specialists, since all of the relevant knowledge only exists in in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I understood is this author's definition of a generalist is someone who expands his scope beyond just programming. To things like design, business development, hr management, recruiting, raising funds etc. Generally, it may not be so common to find an individual who's almost equally as passionate about all of these things. In the end we got limited time on this planet and can't learn everything.
If you ever want to rise in the ranks as an engineer, design and business are practically required.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ever want to rise in the ranks as an engineer, design and business are practically required.
Building the thing right is useless unless you're building the right thing.
In fact most of those folks turn toxic because they don't get their way
I'm a fairly capable generalist. For many years I struggled with pretty real imposter syndrome. It's a lot better recently, and it certainly helps to work with people who can remind you it's a strength - but being a young person without a precise specialism in a room with 'specialists' I found very hard, regardless of my abilities or what I could offer. I guess it's very daunting to be sat across a table with the hea…