
Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success - devy
https://dariusforoux.com/skill-stacking/
======
Kaveren
I don't find these sorts of articles valuable.

The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never
controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any
accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying.

If we remove all the filler in this article (more or less the entire article),
it amounts to "be okay at multiple things rather than trying to be good at
something".

As per usual with incredibly vague life advice from unaccomplished people,
this isn't always a good idea to apply. Being excellent at something (or at
least very good) has its merits. For example, I don't want someone who can
write "Hello, World!" in 30 programming languages. I want someone who
understands even just one programming language inside and out, and really puts
the effort into improving.

> "Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds Of Success"

No it doesn't.

Bonus points if you have a modal that pops up to sucker you into a free
mailing list in hopes of converting you to an over-priced life advice seminar
/ program / book.

There is no secret bullet to productivity, and paying $197 for this snake oil
salesman's course (how long do you want to bet that "sale" has been going on
for?) is not going to help you. Eat well. Sleep. Maintain relationships with
people you care about. Work hard, pay attention to what you're doing and think
critically. That's all there is to it.

> "Read over 500 books"

Someone bragging about the number of books they read is hilarious.

Congratulations on $1.2m in revenue and a business degree, but that doesn't
make you worth listening to.

~~~
tirumaraiselvan
>The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never
controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any
accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying

In technical terms, what you are suggesting is that the article is making a
claim which is unfalsifiable. But actually it is falsifiable. All you have to
do is find a person who has diverse skills but is unsuccessful.

~~~
EForEndeavour
Finding a single counterexample works in mathematics to disprove a theorem,
but not in this situation. It is silly to claim that having diverse skills
guarantees success. The article doesn't even claim that; it explicitly
mentions increasing the _odds_ of success. To "disprove" this claim, you'd
need to design and run a study that looks for a statistical relationship
between success and skill diversity, both of which you'd have to quantify
somehow.

~~~
Amygaz
It doesn’t guarantee it, it doubles the probability, and it is stackable. So
there is a metric to measure (somehow).

Now, the author is probably just bullshittng things out of his fingers, an
assumption I make based on the lack of any evidence being provided.

Nonetheless, since stackability and doubling at each turn mean you can trend
toward 100% very quickly, then you can look at people you see as very
successful, no matter what is your favorite measure of success, and observe
for yourself.

Now I like “social impact” as a measure of success, but it’s a lot easier to
go with “f’ing rich people” because data is being compiled every year by
different business magazines. So when you take the list of Billionaires, you
can realize that only one thing, sometimes two, where involved.

Now if someone would like to apply a statistical analysis to this, I think it
would favor The null hypothesis, which is: there is no relation between the
number of skills stacked and the amount of money in ones’ bank account

~~~
solveit
>Now, the author is probably just bullshittng things out of his fingers, an
assumption I make based on the lack of any evidence being provided.

Also based on the author talking about "doubling probability". What does that
even mean?

------
nostrademons
Not sure if I really believe this.

I'm someone who likes to pick up new skills for fun & fulfillment. And yet,
when it to _career success_ , roughly 80% of my net worth is attributable to
two, maybe three skills: being really good at Javascript, and having solid CS
fundamentals in data structures and algorithms. Together they got me into
Google, where I picked up the third skill (knowing the full Search stack from
the crawler to the browser), which made me very valuable to Google and got me
a bunch of stock that's done quite well since.

Now, I _also_ picked up a bunch of other skills while I was there: visual
design, interaction design, product design, empathy, management & leadership,
some machine-learning & data science, distributed systems, how to approach a
vaguely-defined problem with no clear answer and make forward progress on it,
how to balance lunch & a drink on your laptop and show up late to a meeting
without spilling, etc. And I had some skills from before Google: investing
(professional, not just personal; I worked for a company that wrote software
for hedge funds for 18 months), game design, compiler design, Django, even
some PHP from my college days. And I've learned even more since leaving
Google: entrepreneurship, corporate structure, identifying markets, Android
development, iOS development, watchOS development, blogging, YouTube video
production, Photoshop, how cryptocurrencies work, a lot more unstructured data
mining & data science, what risk actually means, etc.

But when it comes to cold, hard economic returns, nothing seems to beat
identifying an in-demand skill, doubling down on it until you're noticeably
better than the vast majority of people a company will interview, and finding
a wealthy buyer who will pay you for it. (On a corporate level, this
translates to finding a growing and potentially large market, doubling down on
it until you're noticeably better than every other company in that market, and
finding a wealthy buyer who will pay you for it.) I kinda wish it wasn't so,
because I really enjoy the learning-new-things part of life, and I enjoy
learning hot new technologies or algorithms more than obscure proprietary
frameworks in a megacorp. But people pay you for the portion of your skillset
that is relevant to the problem they want solved, not the portion that is
personally fulfilling.

~~~
ascar
Thanks for sharing.

I think it all comes down to the role and career path. Engineers that are
specialized are way more interesting for large corporations, because they have
a lot of engineers and most of them work on very specialized problems. A CTO
of a tech startup should be a decent engineer, but with a much broader
knowledge-base than someone, let's say, optimizing V8.

I'm currently finishing my master's degree and got a contract for after
graduation for one of the best management trainee programs in Germany for a
technical R&D management career path (the company has roughly 1 such position
across all roles and departments for every 4000 employees) and it pays over
50% of the average starting salary. I see that as a very successful career
start.

What made me interesting for the company wasn't just my internship/work
experience as a software engineer (equivalent to about 2 years full-time work)
that should place me among the top 10-20% of my fellow students, but my
broader experience as a leader in several clubs. The best fit for the role
wasn't someone specialized in engineering, but someone with a genuine interest
in leading that is still capable and at least somewhat knowledgeable of
software engineering.

My skills in hacking LaTeX to do my bidding or knowing the insides of Office
Open XML format were absolutely irrelevant or only marginally emphasized that
I can learn some niche stuff. Broadening your skillset only helps career
success, when the learned skills supplement the requirements of the position.

------
syndacks
When I rode my bicycle across the USA from LA to NYC I met a dude named Ryan
through WarmShowers. Over pizza and beers at a local joint in Tempe, AZ, Ryan
told me about this blog called _Semi-Rad_ - "you don't need to be a rockstar
in something, you just need to be semi-rad. Semi-rad people have the most fun,
they achieve the most, they experience the spice of life. They're not so
caught up in perfection, but they still achieve a degree of greatness."

I approve this message, Darius Foroux, and I encourage others to consider the
trade-offs of "perfection" vs. "semi-rad".

~~~
nopinsight
In several fields, people at the top 1% of skill level earn many times those
at top 10% and the mediocre ones may barely get by. This phenomenon is
spreading because better technologies enable top performers to serve more
people.

(See: the Superstar effect for the most extreme examples.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Superstar_Effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Superstar_Effect))

How would the average workers or even ‘semi-rads’ in generally less lucrative
fields like arts or cooking save enough for their retirements if they settle
for that skill level?

~~~
imgabe
How sustainable is that model going to be? It's mathematically impossible for
_everyone_ to be in the top 1%.

~~~
akvadrako
Not if we create 10 billion different specialties.

~~~
digitalsushi
I think what makes it a 1% is the disparity of demand.

------
paultopia
Those interested in the generalist/specialist debate could do worse than to
read Isaiah Berlin's classic essay on the subject, The Hedgehog and the Fox:
[https://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/crag/files/2016/06/the_hedgeh...](https://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/crag/files/2016/06/the_hedgehog_and_the_fox-
berlin.pdf)

~~~
godelmachine
Do you mean to say it’s a good read or a useless read? Your choice of words
confuse me.

~~~
ambicapter
"You could do worse than this" = "There are many of lesser quality than this"
= this is of high quality

------
taffronaut
I disagree with this. In my experience as a generalist, most hirers are like
customers in a tool store. They're looking for a tool to do a thing. Trying to
interest them in a Swiss Army Knife is a waste of time. If they're shopping
for skill x, they'll look for the best specialist. Hirers who are
metaphorically stocking up for an expedition in the unknown, or who will admit
to themselves that they are already lost in the wilderness, are going to be
interested in generalists. That's a much smaller (but more interesting)
market.

~~~
mark_l_watson
While I mostly agree with you, I am a generalist who has gone deep in a few
things (old fashioned symbolic AI, deep learning, and NLP). But, I have lots
of experience in many other areas. I have mostly worked as a consultant for
the last 25 years, and remotely, and having a lot of breadth has helped a lot.
I have different resumes that stress different types of experience and when
someone would contact me to possibly do work, I would give them the resume
matching what they needed at the time. From my web site anyone hiring me would
see the broad range of things I am interested in so I was never trying to
misrepresent myself - I just wanted to give the person contacting me the right
material to help them get me approved for a project.

------
jolmg
It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist.
In the end, they both have their pros and cons.

> You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills.

I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a
generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always
keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that
specialists need to do in groups. However, I think a group of specialists will
always outperform a lone generalist. Because of that, I imagine specialists
are in general more preferable in a company environment.

EDIT: I'm curious if there are people here that have chosen to practice a wide
breadth of related skills, as opposed to lasering in to one very specific
skill. Do you feel glad/happy about it, or have you regretted it?

EDIT 2: What is a generalist or a specialist is of course very relative. One's
specialist is another's generalist. I also get the sense that, in the tech
world, what is a specialist today, is a generalist tomorrow. Maybe that's just
natural of an expanding industry.

~~~
killjoywashere
Undergrad in physics. 7 years in the military. Medical school, self-taught
computing (mainly Unix, web stuff, and python), surgical internship, more
programming, residency, more programming. Now medical director of a clinical
lab with 40 staff and major research in progress, published, overseeing
clinical and research employees across 10 timezones, working across 13 time
zones, have briefed to highest levels of government. Stayed married and my
kids seem to be doing ok.

And the sword of Damocles hangs over my neck ever day. Worth it? Probably, but
still not actually clear.

~~~
SpanishConf
Jesus Fucking Christ. As someone who's 19 years old and struggling with life
(see my post history if you want to know more, but it ain't pretty, heh)
you've sure done a lot of things and congratulations for you success!

You seem to have an unlimited thirst for knowledge. I envy that at a personal
level.

~~~
Aeolun
If you’re still 19 years old you’ll get there.

Especially if you want to.

------
stevenkovar
One concept I appreciate: you can bridge two common skills together in a way
such that you are uniquely qualified to practice this combination of skills
and you have zero (or near-zero) competition.

------
kamaal
This is article is really good. It could have been better if it was in a
little detail.

In short people skills, money/investing skills and work skills. You can't go
wrong and the author is largely right.

Its always a mistake to assume that merely your programming skills will take
you places, well may be if you are Jeff Dean.

If you are anybody else, people skills matter way above anything you can
contribute anywhere. Corporations are large places, where your growth and
development largely lie with the people you work with. Influencing, persuasion
and in general a myriad of people skills are always what's going to make it
rain. In most places what work you do is largely irrelevant to your
bosses/stakeholders, in fact you could build the best possible software on
earth, but their(bosses) salaries or careers aren't going to see much change
because of that- There fore they largely don't care. You have to get them to
like you, that's how career progress is going to come. On the same lines they
can award you a good raise, a bonus or a promotion, nothing much is going to
change in company financials. At their unit levels, the things they give you
will largely vanish without a trace because they look at reports by a GROUP BY
statement. So what does this mean? It means, while paying you great rewards
they can hide you, however if you want these rewards you have to be visible to
them in a good way.

There fore influencing, persuasion, psychology and range of people skills like
Charisma play a huge role in career growth. No mater where you are. This is a
whole different skill set which unfortunately most don't even know exists.

The other ones are obvious. It always helps if you have good skills in the
work you do. Always read books on the state of the art, do projects which are
in trend etc etc.

And personal finance, of course. Because the money you earn has to be useful
to you.

------
arendtio
> When it comes to skills, quantity often beats quality.

While I agree with a lot of the author's statements, that part is wrong in my
opinion. I think it is more along the lines of:

\- every skill has a value

\- some skills complement each other

The value probably rises exponentially with the progress (similar to how much
effort you have to invest, to reach a skill level). So having many shallow
skills is probably not as valuable as being very good at one thing. Likewise
being more skilled than the average (median) person on multiple skills can
result in a high value.

In essence: If you want to reach a good value/effort ratio spend your time on
a skill set and not just on a single skill.

------
dabei
Agree that you need a balanced set of skills. However the advice in the
article is pushing it too far.

Being a generalist is great in terms of broadening you career options, at an
early stage anyway. But until you truly master something most of the higher
tier opportunities remain closed to you.

These opportunities are much rarer and often not advertised. But the
competition is also less intense and arbitrary. It is also in human nature to
enjoy getting better at something. This path is actually not as hard as people
think, and way more fun than keep picking up new mediocre skills.

------
zoron
In contrast, i think just become average in many things is counterproductive
than the opposite.

------
dr_teh
The amount of people plagiarising Scott Adams to sound smart is staggering

~~~
hudibras
Using an attributed quotation is not the same as plagiarization.

------
miqueloc
Yes, self-help article alert. But, what is interesting is to point that it’s
true that soft skills are usually underrated. Of course, being a specialist
makes you one of a kind, but I don’t think everyone can be that person
(meaning, you will become very unhappy just struggling, because normal people
has different passions not only one). Actually, this person is the 1%, and
trying to be them can be frustrating, so we can be mid-rad. Also, in
technology, yes, you want an specialist that solves the problem in 5 seconds,
but multiple skills make interconnections and new ideas or relations to other
important, not that technical, questions. Meaning, is the 1% because those
problems are, maybe a 20% for the company, the other 80% is focused on
multiple problems related with reality. For example, Agile, how things are
tested, communication, visibility, goals... Anyway, I found the reflection
useful. Here, speaking:

\- Advertising graduate, ex copy writer, ex music producer, ex bartender, ex
journalist writer, QA analyst, now self-taught programmer, now kind of in
testing automation and managing infrastructure and devops.

Future is bright

------
shanghaiaway
Rather than stacking it should be lining up a variety of skills, because it is
horizontal integration rather than vertical.

