Ask HN: Is it better to generalise or specialise as a developer?

It is a loose loose situation. You either are so specialized no one will hire you because you don't know enough generally or you know too much about too many things and they feel you will be bored doing one thing all day.

I would suggest you find something you like, find ways to contribute for free in forums and code given away for free so people will look to you as an authority and flip that into finding work.

Niches can certainly be profitable and stable, but I feel like being a generalist may actually make it more likely that you’ll stumble across a niche or two, simply by being exposed to more ideas.

Two things. First I'm not a developer. Second thing is I'm a generalist in every sense. And so I'm going to offer my opinion: generalists get things done no matter what the circumstances are. I'm not going to say anything bad about people who specialize because there is definitely room for that.

But it sounds to me like being a generalist is working well for you so I change it? You've certainly heard the phrase "a jack of all trades isbetter than none" but the rest of that says "but often better than a master of one".

If anybody ever questions why you don't specialize in one particular facet of your craft, you might remind them that being multi-dimensional in your skill set has often led you to solutions the specialist might not come up with. The amount of cross-pollination between specialties can often lead to better results in the long run.

My experience is you generalize and clients start low balling finding any number of faults AND demands. You specialize and you can be rock solid and demand solid rates.

Please note that this is not an endorsement to become outdated but to evolve and specialize in current practices.

I too love all things software but I have learned to conserve it for my own projects, not for my services.

There’s 2 types of specialization, and I’d argue it’s good to choose one, and be decently familiar as a generalist on other things. One is technical, along the lines of web dev, systems programming, integrated, etc.

The other is domain specialization - whether that be a coding domain like billing, UI, microcontrollers, or a business domain (IE industry) like shipping, business to business productivity apps, entertainment, etc.

It can be very easy to swap jobs within an industry. Likewise with coding domain. If you’re bouncing around all the time with no focus, it can end up that you will be less of a fit in a lot of places you work at. Still a very strong generalist is still quite impressive.

My answer is it depends on what you want to do. If you want to work at a FAANG, specialization is the name of the game. Find a niche like time-series databases or something, and work on that.

If you want to work at a smaller company or found a startup, being a generalist is a great asset. It also puts you closer to the top of the hierarchy if you can make yourself invaluable to the business/yourself by being a “Swiss army knife.” By that, I mean everyone wants you around, because you can probably solve upwards of 90% of the problems that arise.

Of course, you can’t be a full generalist, you will end up having some language or tech stack you’re more adept in. That’s fine. You’ll probably end up being “T” shaped.

But to reiterate: if you want to make good money and you love a niche topic, specialize in it. Then go and work at a company with the scale/needs for that specific niche. Otherwise, if you’re a generalist, you’re better equipped to handle a vast multitude of problems, build initial solutions, and then hand them off to specialists as your company/project grows.

Edit: You might also just be a fox and not a hedgehog — that’s what I would consider myself. An interesting read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox.

Unless entering a subdomain diametrically opposes the entering of other subdomains, the way I always approached this question was that of questioning why it's necesssry for them to be at odds with each other.

I felt that over the years of meeting tons of people whom I felt were quite "specialized" from my point of view, it would turn out that these rockstars were also generalists in that they picked up so many things across lanes that they were able to develop their niche or what I thought of as their specialized skill.

Sometimes having a lot of general skills and making them work together in a novel way could arguably be a form of specialization, thus establishing a spectrum or cycle of development

At risk of oversimplifying: Einstein endeavored on his established specialty in physics, but everyone would agree he was also just really good at physics in general if considered by generalists or interdisciplinary scientists, right?

If you do specialize, it's critical to develop and follow a serious learning plan to prepare for the time when demand for your speciality lessens.

Mind you, that's not a bad idea for generalists, too.

I don't remember where I read this (or heard it) but someone said getting rich is easy: either be the best at something or be second best at two things. The phrasing is obviously just a little too neat but the point makes sense to me - someone that knows a few things very very deeply is just as valuable as the most knowledgeable about some (other) niche thing.

Jumping around is fun (for a little while) but depth is what people really pay for eg how much could you charge if you could squeeze the last bit of latency out of some design that gives a firm an edge against their competitor. I'm sure people will claim that most business doesn't hinge on the margins and maybe that's true but there definitely are businesses that do.

In the context of a company, the higher up you get (on a technical track), the more you need to operate across different projects, technologies etc. - being able to jump into new things is mandatory/expected. But having deep knowledge in something important to the org gives you a foundation on which to succeed. I would say that specialising perhaps allows you to stand out more efficiently as a lower level IC.

Neither; or both: be T or ∏ shaped. Have broad, (relatively) shallow knowledge in many domains, and (relatively) deep knowledge in one or two that are complementary to each other, and for which your broad knowledge can be used to work with teams having more specialized understanding.

My take is that you don’t have much choice. You can’t help but find these things interesting, and you’re presumably driven by your day job to excel at the specialties it requires to some degree. The most you can do is to shape your environment so that it requires you to do more specialist or generalist work through your job, or feed yourself with books that give you the urge to focus on more or fewer things in the rest of your time.

Both, but I’d go breadth first and then start going deeper into various topics as you need to. The trick is really learning how to learn and becoming an autodidact.

Ultimately what is best is what will motivate you the most. You’re gonna get a lot of opinions here but you need to trust your gut. Do what makes you happy. If you want to learn it all - don’t deny that.

my two cents: ignore all this advise, and do whatever suites your character best. At the end of the day you have to manage in a demanding job, if you force anything down your throat that doesn't fit your character, then the result may turn out to be increasingly damaging down the road.

One persons generalist is another person's specialist.

You could be a web developer, you could be a framework developer, you could be a EMCAscript developer, you could be a javascript developer, you could be a webasm developer..

If you like money, find a niche and "specialise" but to be honest you'll ultimately gravitate towards your interests even in that "specialist" field.

Just work on shit you find interesting, the money will follow.

You have to specialize in order to progress up the development latter (if you want to go the IC track). You wont get past Senior or even regular Software Developer if you don't specialize is something...unless you work at a place that rewards time-spent versus work product.

The correct answer is both obviously but you will need to, at some point, specialize in something.

Two comments:

First, "One month web dev, next month apps, the next month microcontrollers, next automation" that is _incredibly_ generalist. You'd probably be better off specializing at least a little more than that. If you only were doing two of those, you'd still probably count as a generalist :)

Second: I don't think there's one right or wrong answer to this question, but a generalist is in some sense a safer option. If you specialize, take care to specialize in something that will be around in 10+ years. Now would not be a good time to specialize in coffeescript or coldfusion for example, but specializing in Rust seems very safe. Specializing in julia, zig, or dart would be on the slightly riskier side.

Depends if you want a job or a business. Employees do well specializing. Entrepreneurs have to be broadly competent.

There is more than two options - you can be anywhere in between - there is no need to choose one or the other. I find having a specific technical skill helpful in getting your foot in the door as employers are often looking to have their existing systems maintained. Other than that you can diversify as you want.

Do you find yourself doing freelance work in one or two specific industries or is your clientele generalized as well?

The discussion a few months ago on the article "Short Fat Engineers Are Undervalued"[0] was really helpful to me in thinking about this issue. The top comment's perspective resonated with me:

> The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product.

> Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something.

So, whether being a specialist or generalist is better depends on the context. In the end, it depends on what kinds of jobs you want to work on. If you enjoy working on the full stack, then there are still plenty of people who will want to hire you, especially smaller businesses. Larger organizations hiring a contractor are probably more likely to be seeking a specialist for a very specific job.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.cdidam?id=26119087

Don't be too broad, hiring managers won't know what to do with you. I have too many differing specialisations and interviews start with "what would you say you actually do?" People want to know which box you fit into.

when you are a freelancer, having a niche really helps with marketing more than anything else, easier for you to find jobs and for jobs to find you.

It's not really about "better" its all about what advantages there are to different things and what advantages do you want to pursue

I've never specialized. Each of my jobs has been in a totally different industry, and my role has been very different many times. FinTech/EdTech/Green Energy/Gaming/Insurance, and Fullstack/FE/BE/Hardware/Data/Game/Data Developer.

Sometimes I get bummed at how deep my peers have gone in various subjects. Your brand kind of has to become "I can get production code working in pretty much any domain, but will be less great at hyper-specific areas of work". It's only bitten me once, and I even called out what was going to happen in advance and the employer just didn't listen.

There's always time to change though. I am mostly motivated by making money, so I just learn as much as I can about whatever tech my employer is using, but sometimes I think it'd be nice to reuse some of this knowledge sometime.

> I often hear it’s good to find a niche. Wondering if anyone can speak to the benefits of doing so?

Being more knowledgeable than most people because you've taken the time to learn the stuff that's harder to figure out/more nuanced, is the benefit. Being a mile wide and an inch deep means your expertise is in the wide, but there are problems that need the depth. The job that I did not get was hyper-specific to the JVM, writing high performance Java, which I said prior to the interview I wouldn't be able to do (and I was right).

If you're not interested in going deep on anything, don't. Keep chasing your interests. Just understand that the tradeoff is the lack of depth.

Depends on your personality and career goals. I prefer to specialize 70% in my primary skill (Ruby web development) and spread the other 30% in other langs/topics.