Table of Contents
What's a Jack of All Trades?
Origin of the Saying
Which is a Better Hire?
How to Become a Jack of All Trades
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one of my mentors used to say, "you should know something about everything, and know everything about something"
Nice quote!
I absolutely love that! What a wonderful mentor
I've heard this described as being T shaped: You've got a lot of depth in one place, and coverage of a lot of places.
The smaller the team the more likely you're going to have to be comb-shaped.
Perfectly put!
I would vote for a T shaped skill set, that mean you must master one of your trade and stretch your skills horizontally.
Good article. What you need is a balance where someone is a master of one thing but can as the saying goes turn there hand to anything. This is referred to as T shaped, as in the virtical line depects the depth of knowledge, skill and experience in a specific area whilst the horizontal depects the breadth which is more shallow.
I look for depth of skill, experience, knowledge in areas which will compliment the teams and business requirements. Though each team member needs a breadth of skills and experience and finally an aptitude to learn new things.
I prefer the way of the master. However, I believe the standards have been significantly raised in the industry over the past years.
As a result, even if you don't want to be Jack, you'll have to know a few things in other specialities.
Appreciate your opinion and insight
Yeah it is! I didn't realize there was a shorthand for "jack of all trades" and it's my favorite quote! Lol
I also share the opinion that the best way to go is "Jack of all trades and the master of one ".
Jack of all trades are what a startup need and look for when it's small. The more the company grow the more they need specialist
Absolutely agree!
Just my opinion, this article possibly is written in a nice way, but very general.
The reality is different, you are limited what you can learn in a certain amount of time and most likely will adapt your "path of learning" to what you are currently working (if you have a job) or what you are looking for. But as soon you have the job, it again will influence a lot what you will do to get better and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Finally the decision relies a lot on what kind of roles or work you are actually referring to in your article, because even if we are discussing about Software Development, it can be very different, if we are writing about Web Development or any other work related to development.
To be more clear on what I am writing about, getting better in development (e.g. programming) depends a lot on actual projects being done, you know, just reading theory and maybe also doing little practice yourself can be very different compared to what work will be. You need to do real projects and these in turn will dictate what can be improved well for future.
Just to provide an example (from my own experience), I have to work a lot with different products/technologies and this does not allow too much to focus on what I "prefer to learn and practice".
To answer your question from my perspective: I am not hiring myself at the moment, but I would simply try to get right person for whatever I am looking for and a person who is a good, motivated learner, especially if the person is unexperienced and needs to learn anyway (like looking Junior Developers instead of Senior Developers, but the latter still should be good at improving skills).
Right now, even though I mostly focus on web dev, I still consider myself as a generalist, and market myself as is due to the few reasons.
I think people at the starting point of their career are always generalists, even with international certificates like CCNA, GCP associate, etc. However, to advance your career, I guess specialize in one aspect is the only way (T-shaped). At least to me, I have never seen a job listing to hire a senior "generalist".
Also do not forget how difficult it would be to become a "Senior Generalist", if becoming just a "Senior Specialist" (with good fundamental knowledge of course) is already very hard.
You have to specialize to some extend, you cannot just know "a bit of everything".
This is apt - I've just finished a piece on DevOps engineer shortage and automation. In all my research for that piece, I've learnt that the most valuable DevOps engineer is the one who knows enough about everything to "guide the bots".
I feel it's like this.
Jack of all trades means you can communicate with other employees with the same technical buzzwords tjry use, so you can understand their problem and coordinate better.
And... master of one means you can do a better job at something.
Everyone you hire should be T shaped. If they can't at least diversify enough to make coffee for the team, what are they going to do when you have no work for them?
I like to think of myself as shaped like a comb, with some broken teeth.