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Ask HN: Generalist or Specialist

2 points by DirtyPowder ↗ HN
Recently I have seen quite a few articles on HN regarding the benifits and trend toward being a generalist. My question to the HN community, is do you see this as the direction of developers or even in the tech community in general? That we should become generalists in our field rather than specialists?

3 comments

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alexwestholm
I think it would depend on where you're working. If you're at a startup, you must be a generalist because there is a need to do as much as possible with the least amount of resources. A generalist who can perform 3 functions reasonably well is therefor much better for a startup than 3 people who perform these functions to perfection (at least in most cases). In a large corporation, there is often an inherent degree of specialization (whether or not it's efficient).
DirtyPowder
Thank you for your reply. Now that I think about it more and in line with your comment, with HN being a start-up atmosphere, I guess it makes since to see more of the generalist mentality.
Travis
Men have been trending towards specialization ever since we started seriously urbanizing. Specialization is important when you need a greater depth of understanding in one (usually) narrow field. Assuming that you have a maximum amount of "skill" or "talent", it then behooves you to distribute that in the most optimal fashion, within that context.

All that means is this: when you have a larger, more diverse, population base, specialization can be afforded. My corporate office has an employee dedicated to shipping and receiving FedEx packages. But the underlying structure can support that, because we have many analysts, etc.

Being a specialist is just different than a generalist. Do what fits you best. I know I like dabbling in a lot of different things (was a double major, English and CS, in college), so being a generalist works to my strengths. However, I know people who only like their narrow view, but like to know how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Also, some fields require specialization. Working crypto implementations? You'd better be damned specialized. But starting a company requires so many different types of work, that you pretty much have to be a generalist to succeed (or else have 15 people as co-founders who can immediately specialize).

One other thing -- even when there is a group of specialists, you need generalists to bring them together. All things being equal, I would probably prefer a team of generalists for a cofounding team (say, 2-3 people) versus a team of specialists.