

Why being a specialist is better than being a generalist for getting a job - jra4
https://www.hireart.com/blog/sharp-focus-how-to-tame-your-inner-generalist/

======
lhnz
Narratives are important.

While it's true that companies often look to hire for a particular skill set
and therefore eat up the narrative of a specialist, the skill set of a
generalist is a lot more useful in a small startup or if you decide to try to
form your own company. (Likewise the skill set of a specialist is often more
appropriate for contracts or permanent roles in _large_ companies.)

Either way, the article is right in saying that for a manager trying to hire
to fulfill a specific role, the narrative of a specialist will often win.
However, I personally despise this idea of "taming your inner generalist" as
it is natural and human to be so. There are companies that will filter you out
because your experience is too broad and they are at least being helpful in
removing themselves from your market. I would not wish to work for a company
in which employees of hiring capacity treat people as fungible resources that
perform set roles. The companies that are left which look for individual
potential, perspiration and personality in whatever form it comes, show, as
far as I am concerned, a far deeper understanding of where innovation comes
from; criss-crossing domains[0] gives a huge amount of idea optionality.

Additionally, the advantage of being a generalist is in de-risking yourself
against the movement of the employment market.

[0] [http://www.fastcompany.com/3009649/leadership-now/steve-
jobs...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3009649/leadership-now/steve-jobs-nate-
silver-and-pablo-picasso-why-the-most-creative-people-are-gen)

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epoxyhockey
I'm conflicted.. I, personally, would hire the well-rounded "generalist"
individual every time. Yet, I know that as a job applicant, most hiring
managers don't have much vision when it comes to developing a well-rounded
team.

~~~
nine_k
That's why hiring managers should have little say in the final hiring
decision. Their job is to attract interested applicants and weed out the
clearly unfitting among them (e.g. those who fake their credentials).

The rest of interviewing should be done by actual engineers, peers and
colleagues of a prospect employee.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
Be warned: many people, especially engineers, are inexperienced and/or poor
interviewers. So quality candidates who are savvy enough to look at the
interview as a two-way street might very well rule _you_ out as an employer if
you're not thoughtful and strategic about who you put in front of them.

~~~
epoxyhockey
I couldn't have said it better myself.

The best engineering teams I've encountered are ones that have an Engineering
Manager. The hierarchy is Project/Program Manager -> Engineering Manager ->
Engineers. The engineering manager (of technical background) cultivates the
engineering team, instills best practices and makes final decisions, without
having to sit in endless meetings with the business side (the program
manager's job). The engineering manager is usually the hiring manager for more
engineers.

It's not a sexy, flat organization, but day-to-day operations are less like
herding cats and more about promoting technical excellence.

------
theli0nheart
This advice isn't really universal. It really depends on what type of job
you're looking for. If you want to work at a startup, being a specialist ain't
going to get you much attention. What's important is that you've had a broad
range of experiences and can adapt quickly in any situation.

If you're a founder or early employee at a fast-growing startup, you'll have
to make the choice to either remain a generalist (i.e., C-suite), or join the
majority of other employees and focus in on something specific. Either way,
being a generalist in the beginning of a company's lifecycle can only help
you.

~~~
Smudge
> If you want to work at a startup, being a specialist ain't going to get you
> much attention.

At the same time, few startups I've encountered will hire developers who have
never used their technology stack.

I recall, during a conference call with one startup, explaining my background
in both Ruby and C# only to have one of the co-founders exclaim "you _know_ we
use Node and not Rails here, right?" \-- I replied that yes, I do. But I've
only ever dabbled in Node and you asked about my experience in web
development. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in your product and wouldn't
be willing to work on my Javascript... They seemed to lose interest after
that.

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trustfundbaby
Generalists work really well at startups or very small companies, but the
paradox is that as they grow, generalists have to become specialists or
they'll find themselves increasingly irrelevant in the general scheme of
things. Its a hard one to realize but its a very important lesson to learn to
avoid hard conversations.

But yeah, if you're applying at a bigger company (say 30+ people) focus on a
specific skill but don't shy away from calling attention to your versatility
as a secondary step in putting your resume together

~~~
MetaCosm
Yeah, unless they grow into team/project leads (where having a functional and
working knowledge of every piece has value).

~~~
nolite
ditto.. and unless its your company :D

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peteratt
Tech changes so fast that "specialists" in a language or platform can become
jobless in a matter of a few years. It's an adapt to survive scheme. In the
case of programming languages, the most important thing is to understand the
underlying concepts. They always repeat, with different syntax and maybe some
incremental innovations, but the basic thinking behind them changes way slower
than the languages themselves. As some of you have pointed, I'd always hire a
generalist when given the choice.

~~~
hugocaracoll
I like your speech. I mean, I totally agree with you. Unfortunately only a
minor portion of job offers asks for generalists. Most companies don't
understand the potential of a trait such as curiosity that is found in a
generalist personality.

------
quanticle
I don't think the article is arguing against _being_ a generalist. It's
arguing against _selling yourself_ as a generalist. Being a generalist is
fine. But when you're applying to a particular job, emphasize the specific
skills that you have which would be applicable to that job.

The advantage of being a generalist, of course, is that you have lots of
specific skills that apply to lots of different jobs. You just shouldn't list
them all on your resume all the time.

------
lumens
It's good advice:

Build a focused narrative around why you're a great fit for a job you're
interested in.

My company is building a product to help you do exactly this: Build a tight,
_anonymous_ narrative about why you'd be a great fit for the role you want.
Employers browse these profiles and request to interview you if they think
you're a fit. The anonymity is important to protect the currently employed.

We're working hard to both automate the creation process for these profiles
and remove the burden of answering "What do employers want to see?" for you,
the user.

Check us out—[https://www.mightyspring.com](https://www.mightyspring.com).
We're in private beta, but live track invite requests and will expedite to HN
folks.

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mmohsenazimi
But you have to be a generalist to be able to grow in a company.

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netpenthe
to me this is wrong in my circumstance.

\- i live in a smaller city in Australia

as a generalist i can pretty much always get a job (developing, sys admin etc)

i've seen friends specialize in particular technologies and have to move
interstate to work in that area or fly in/fly out.

------
rhizome
This prioritizes the T candidate over the O candidate through institutional
logic (McKinsey). It also ignores the XY Problem tendency in hiring people
where they think a certain set of skills is necessary and try to target that,
rather than have a conversation about the actual problem and see how the
candidate can satisfy it. In this way, it's valorizing the Ninja Rockstar (see
also: Big Data, "we're changing the world of X," etc.).

