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How to specialize after a career as a generalist?

30 points by throwitaway_ ↗ HN
I have about 30 years in as a sysadmin / Linux / Networking person. I have worked at a fairly large organization and some small shops, and would consider myself very competent in linux (kernel hacking, networking, configuration, automation, scripting, etc). Very good at building servers, configuring VMs, configuring openstack infrastructure (e.g. building it from bare metal)...

However, I am now in my 50s, and want to move out of my position (e.g. away from the organization I am at)... but it seems when I look around, there are very few "generalist" jobs in the IT field (that pay more than entry level). I am not making 6 figures, so not asking for a lot of money, but I can not live on "fresh out of college" pay.

How does one go about specializing when there are so many things that are interesting? I feel like IT is going through the same thing that happened to engineering and medicine... at one time the barber was a doctor. At one time a Physicist could do it all. I feel like I used to be that person in IT. You need a database, no problem. You need a webserver, no problem. You need some service stood up in the cloud, no problem. Now when I look at jobs, they want specialists, but I am the old jack of all trades.

How do you HN "old timers" who have chosen to move on and can not find the old general sysadmin position decide which field to go into? I mean, do you just wake up and say "I want to get back into programming and do full stack devops?" or "I want to go into networking" and spend thousands getting a CCIE? I am just not sure how to take the first step on the journey of a few thousand steps. I have done the "what interests me" games, but I find a lot of things interesting (probably one reason I went into sysadmin)...

I know this seems general, but any help would be appreciated.

15 comments

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readonthegoapp
conjecturing here...

i would think part of it would be -- just pick something?

then...

try to get a job doing that something. or train until you can get a job doing that something.

that said, if you're wanting to potentially keep being a generalist, and only thinking about specializing because you can't find a new gig as a generalist, i would suspect there are a billion jobs out there for what you do -- devops -- contracts, full time, etc.

maybe i'm not getting what your background really is, etc.

throwitaway_
Interesting. My background is actually Electrical and Computer Engineering. However, I technically have a CS degree in there, so I can do _some_ programming (been a while since any _real_ programming).

My work-background is basically all IT work. I spent a few years as a manager of an IT team, but apart from that, Linux server builds, automation, standing up services, planning and building small data centers (e.g. less than 100 racks), networking, virtualization, scripting. I have built a few openstack on prem clouds with 5-7 servers (manually). Getting specs on and building out desktops, workstations, GPU boxes.I have a pretty good amount of experience with on-prem wiring, worked for an electrician at one point, so I know theory/hands on, which helps a lot in the data center. Eh, that is about it, really.

dev_0
IT team need to be a generalist. Maybe upskill yourself to management by becoming the COO of the IT team
readonthegoapp
my devops friend says your bg can def do his job -- sr devops role -- site reliability -- whatever label -- according to him, success in the role is mostly about hard work / caring, as opposed to specific skills -- much of which you just need to pick up along the way -- whether it's cloud-specific, or company-infra-specific, etc.
jones1618
Look for startup positions. In my experience, while startups are in growth mode they need people who can pitch-in and do whatever is required. Your many skills would suit that kind of environment well. Once in, maybe you could pivot to specializing in managing DevOps where your building & configuring skills could be applied to streamlining the org's development pipeline.
sharadov
All sysadmins have transitioned to Devops/SRE roles, given your background, you will be able to pick that up pretty easily.

Everything that you previously did on-prem has transitioned to the cloud.

The fundamentals remain the same - only the tooling has changed.

https://www.gremlin.com/site-reliability-engineering/how-to-...

throwitaway_
>> you will be able to pick that up pretty easily.

I think I was discouraged from DevOPS as my friends that were doing it were hardcore programming... building software all day. I mean, not that I never build software, but they were building huge frameworks for things, and when we hung out and chatted, it sure seemed like pure software engineering and not devops like I thought of it (that is, sysadmin with a lot of automation).

testTED
That is not most devops roles.
bckygldstn
The great thing about a long generalist career history is that you can extract highly specialised threads for different applications by highlighting different parts of your experience.

I'm personally a generalist in the web and data science areas, but I do specialised consulting under a number of different "personas": Django web development, geospatial data analysis, non-deep data science, SaaS MVP backend web dev, etc.

For each specialisation I have a different resume and "tell me a bit about yourself" pitch, often referring to the same projects but highlighting different aspects of my skills.

When someone says they need a specialist they just want someone who can get their stuff done. Having additional skills isn't a detriment as long as you can do the work, just no need to bring them up in your application.

I always thought that eventually I'd settle into a specialisation as I mastered narrow niches and got referrals within a specialisation. But that hasn't naturally happened, and I'm very happy as a generalist working specialised roles in a wide range of domains.

sharadov
It's hard to keep up with niches - but more power to you if you can keep up, definitely keeps your day-day interesting.

I am a data guy - and hoping to move into consulting in a few years.

toast0
I would look at less general listings in areas that you're decent at, and go from there. I've tended to be hired for specific things, and then something breaks that nobody knows how to fix, and I pick it up, and pretty soon I'm back in the generalist "fixer" role that's needed but rarely hired for.

Just don't make my mistake and mention experience in things you don't want to do anymore. Guess who got to take over the mail servers because nobody else knew enough to do it; and guess who's never going to mention experience with mail in a hiring process again. :D

codegeek
Join a small company or startup where they don't have dedicated Sysadmin/server/devops people. Now you could do it all for them.
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