I have this fear sometimes. I am not a real expert in any technology, but I have a decent grasp of many. Over time, I have developed more of an expertise around browser networking, if I were to pick anything, but I'm still no expert there.
Over time, I think the goal should be to develop a "t-shaped expertise", that is, that you have a broad array of skills, but some certain area has become your greatest expertise.
I personally am more than happy to hire "generalists" as long as I think they are good learners and could develop an expertise if the situation calls for it. Anyone who is too strictly focused on one specific language or environment might be too rigid to shift when the shift needs to happen.
I have recruited mostly generalists in the past but with a programming twist they are capable of taking a more holistic approach to a problem instead of just I have to do a piece of code that compiles and pass unit tests.
There is always a need for generalists. People who would otherwise identify as strictly focused on one specific thing are also really generalists, because they have had to adopt other skills to drive their specialization. Whether your workplace can subsist solely on generalists depends on how important and technical your work is.
You can tell this in a team where the core of the team, even just one key person, lives in a very narrow band of language|environment|technology. Not because they are too rigid to shift, but because they work at the very edge of what technology can provide, whether that is performance or reliability.
Most languages|environment|technologies can do neither. If you aren't very concerned about getting the most, while taking the least, out of the hardware you are running on, your work isn't that technical. If you don't have to assure bulletproof reliability because there is a reasonable belief that downtime wouldn't put anyone's life and limb in jeopardy, it probably isn't that important.
But if there are people already doing both, why aren't we building on that expertise instead of enervating the industry with rubbish fad tech?
The underlying question is: What is the basis people bring with them and are you - as an employer - able to work with them.
The notion of "generalist" or "specialist" is bias laden in one way or the other. And if you take the dimensions of our industry, we are all at some point "specialist": tied to only a subsection of our field.
What is missing in the figure: the area of requirements, which mostly overlaps the generalist as well as the specialist.
The gaps of knowledge are uninteresting. Interesting is: "Are they willing to fill the gaps"?
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I have this fear sometimes. I am not a real expert in any technology, but I have a decent grasp of many. Over time, I have developed more of an expertise around browser networking, if I were to pick anything, but I'm still no expert there.
Over time, I think the goal should be to develop a "t-shaped expertise", that is, that you have a broad array of skills, but some certain area has become your greatest expertise.
I personally am more than happy to hire "generalists" as long as I think they are good learners and could develop an expertise if the situation calls for it. Anyone who is too strictly focused on one specific language or environment might be too rigid to shift when the shift needs to happen.
I have recruited mostly generalists in the past but with a programming twist they are capable of taking a more holistic approach to a problem instead of just I have to do a piece of code that compiles and pass unit tests.
There is always a need for generalists. People who would otherwise identify as strictly focused on one specific thing are also really generalists, because they have had to adopt other skills to drive their specialization. Whether your workplace can subsist solely on generalists depends on how important and technical your work is.
You can tell this in a team where the core of the team, even just one key person, lives in a very narrow band of language|environment|technology. Not because they are too rigid to shift, but because they work at the very edge of what technology can provide, whether that is performance or reliability.
Most languages|environment|technologies can do neither. If you aren't very concerned about getting the most, while taking the least, out of the hardware you are running on, your work isn't that technical. If you don't have to assure bulletproof reliability because there is a reasonable belief that downtime wouldn't put anyone's life and limb in jeopardy, it probably isn't that important.
But if there are people already doing both, why aren't we building on that expertise instead of enervating the industry with rubbish fad tech?
The underlying question is: What is the basis people bring with them and are you - as an employer - able to work with them.
The notion of "generalist" or "specialist" is bias laden in one way or the other. And if you take the dimensions of our industry, we are all at some point "specialist": tied to only a subsection of our field.
What is missing in the figure: the area of requirements, which mostly overlaps the generalist as well as the specialist.
The gaps of knowledge are uninteresting. Interesting is: "Are they willing to fill the gaps"?