Tech skillsets: Go deep or go wide? (Part 1/2)

"Jack of all trades, master of none" is a term I've heard all too often when fellow techies describe my stint as a web developer. Back then, I was a generalist dipping my sticky fingers into every new and shiny tech I encountered. In a sense, I'm still that web developer. Just with more money.

Go deep or go wide?

I want to explore the pros and cons of generalizing as opposed to specializing, especially in the context of today's tech landscape. The industry needs both specialists and generalists. That's a simple fact that shouldn't need some nobody tech blogger pointing out, but sometimes people get overly emotional about defending their stance. Want to specialize? Cool, do that. Want to generalize? Also cool, go crazy. But we need to be cognizant of the tradeoffs.

The case for specializing over generalizing

Before every tech and his dog started calling themselves "full-stack developers", specialists seemed to earn a whole lot of money. That was back when I was reading job ads asking for "deep expertise" and extensive work experience in more narrow scopes such as back-end programming and database administration. Some areas, such as COBOL programming, pay a lot for the simple reason that COBOL is still largely in use but COBOL programmers appear to be a dying breed. I've touched a lot of programming languages, but just enough to qualify as a hobbyist in each one. I have a decent frame for comparison between them - a Python lecturer of mine was actually quite entertained at my comparisons of the language to PHP and Ruby - but that often isn't very useful in the professional sense.

Specialists earn big.

The companies whose budgets are large enough to afford to pay for specialists, also tend to use these specialists for projects that are grand in scale. Projects that actually require deep expertise. Projects that add incalculable value to one's CV.

Deep knowledge is also useful for judging the extent of one's resolve and commitment. After all, it takes plenty of both to spend the effort. I personally know someone who specializes in HTML and CSS. It's a very narrow niche and perhaps not very profitable, but undeniably impressive.

Generalists - quite unfairly, I might add - seem to have developed a reputation for being easily distracted. Lacking the necessary discipline and focus required to specialize. I would actually say it takes an extraordinary amount of discipline to avoid going too deeply down one rabbit hoole and shuting out everything else, but that's not the general sentiment. Therefore, in some circles, generalists are seen as those who were unable to specialize as opposed to specialists being unable to generalize.

The conventional advice when it comes to tech specialization, is to specialize in one area while simultaneously being decent in a few related areas. For instance, if you're a Data Analytics guru, you may want to specialize in statistical analysis and mathematics, but at the same time get reasonably good with Data Visualization tools and learn a bit of Python. If you're a primarily a Front-end Developer, learning some simple database concepts would be a useful addition to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Maybe pick up a few frameworks such as ReactJS or VueJS, just to round things out.

I won't argue against that advice, but these days it feels like nothing is ever enough.

Next

We explore the opposite case!