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Discussion on: Are Specialists Becoming Extinct in the Age of Generalists?

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Jessica Daiana • Edited

I'm absolutely a generalist right now but i think all the knowlegde i have it's just foundational. I did support, developed, deployed, unit test, consulting, also so much debugging and troubleshooting. But i want to choice a path, and i finaly found i like to solve puzzles, analyzing and monitoring, grant and seek for the low level devices' stability and reliability.

I'm a generalist but companies i'm interested to work with doesn't hire me because i don't have any specialization. That's so sad. In each company i've worked there are diferents tech tools stacks and i had to learn how to use them. I think that a fundamental characterist of IT people are we are endless curious, learn a new tools it's not a big deal but, we do want stability.

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Dominic Magnifico

Having that foundational knowledge is absolutely something that you can use to your advantage in the industry! Starting out as a generalist and then finding your niche is a path that the vast majority of developers will (and should) follow.

The struggle appears at agencies or companies when they set expectations about being well versed in such a broad set of technologies that often have no relation. That's where the distinction between seeking a generalist and a specialist should be addressed!