Nithin Kamath (founder of Zerodha), has this to say on this topic: "My view on Generalist vs Specialist? Being a jack of all trades helps you grow intellectually & increases odds of finding what you love. But as a business, I think going after one problem(What u love & Core competency) has a much higher chance of success than to spray & hope." (Source: https://twitter.com/Nithin0dha/status/1315209671754407936)
I have a slightly different perspective and is contextual. If you are being looked at from above you should be perceived as a specialist in something and not just an aggregator. If looked from below, you should appear as a generalist who adds value to the people below by bringing in broader perspectives ( product, other functions and business ) and helps specialists contextualize.
In either case, being the opposite would risk irrelevance or redundancy.
Oh, very interesting. I hadn't thought of this, and hadn't heard this argument before, but it does make sense. I'm visualizing a tree (the computer science one) in which every internal node is aggregating everything below it, so is the generalist for everything that goes on below, and at the same when viewed from the perspective of the parent node(s), it is usually collapsed into a single black-box abstraction, and hence a specialist in the function of that subtree as seen in the larger context.
Lot of interesting comments here. My views are similar to what Neeran and Devika have said here. In my opinion, the days of the generalist manager are far gone. I like the term versatilist which refers to having deep expertise in 1-2 disciplines & broad appreciation of multiple disciplines. This allows one to 'see things' more clearly & communicate across fields. Not having reasonably deep expertise in one area is a liability... you need to understand one thing well to have a shot at appreciating other things. I have written a post on this- https://learningandlife.substack.com/p/no-generalists-please?r=qhq0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
I second what Mr. Anand said. I work in a startup as a very early employee. I have worked on HR, Customer/Investor Calls, Setting up SFTP for client data transfer to building a full fledged containerized application hosted over cloud.
I believe being a generalist helps you learn multiple facets.
I believe that the answer to this question depends on the phase of your life. In the early stage of your career, it is better to be a generalist. As you get in the second phase of your career, it is better to be a specialist.
Similar to the "strong-opinions-weakly-held" philosophy, I feel that one should specialize but at all times have enough breadth and situational awareness so that you can do 3 things: 1. Know enough about a bunch of other areas to be able to cross fertilize ideas between your specialization and the other areas, 2. Sense coming shifts so that you know when it is time to change your specialization, and 3. Already know enough about your new area of specialization that you can hit the ground running.
Anand: A counter view... If you consider that the benefits of being a generalist come from the ability (wisdom?) to connect the dots across areas, generate insights, synthesize solutions, etc. -- your typical early-career person may not be ready or mature enough to do that.
If you specialize early in your career, BUT change your specialization after achieving depth in it (e.g. after every 3-4 years), then I think you'd be better prepared to contribute as a generalist in the second half of your career.
A specialist (without the broad knowledge in diverse areas) looks at the world through binoculars. We limit ourself to a very narrow field.
Instead look at the world through the lenses of the giant clam. It has hundreds of eyespots. It is constantly looking in every direction.
We should be allowed to explore diverse interests and follow as many of them as able. Only when you bring things together from completely unrelated fields, you create something new.
Systems should be in place to encourage exploration at early stages of life. And should help us choose a specialisation (if inclined) later.
Not during studies. Not during junior years of career. Later.
Award-winning creative and artist Graham Fink talks about creativity with no borders in this 9 minute video. https://youtu.be/ldYe-1JLAqQ
Intresting discussion. Nowadays we see a growing need for expert-generalist. A mix of both worlds. Not restricting yourself to one particularly field, but developing expert in multiple fields. Helps connect dots for better ideation and you can never get redundant, as long as you choose the right areas to build expertise. Similar to Navin's thoughts.
Yes. Jack of few and master of 1 would be the T shape that Bhuvan has mentioned earlier. Jack of few and master of 2 would be the 𝜋 shape that he mentioned. Vishnu has also talked about versatilist as opposed to generalist.
In my opinion when you look at the need of industry today it is necessary to possess knowledge of all the fields around you in order to be able to connect the dots and understand your relevance in order to perform better, the specialists will be required in order to create generalists in the future, to give an example one can create an algorithm to help other do that function equally effective who might be at different skill levels.
Nithin Kamath (founder of Zerodha), has this to say on this topic: "My view on Generalist vs Specialist? Being a jack of all trades helps you grow intellectually & increases odds of finding what you love. But as a business, I think going after one problem(What u love & Core competency) has a much higher chance of success than to spray & hope." (Source: https://twitter.com/Nithin0dha/status/1315209671754407936)
I have a slightly different perspective and is contextual. If you are being looked at from above you should be perceived as a specialist in something and not just an aggregator. If looked from below, you should appear as a generalist who adds value to the people below by bringing in broader perspectives ( product, other functions and business ) and helps specialists contextualize.
In either case, being the opposite would risk irrelevance or redundancy.
Regards
Prashant KS
Oh, very interesting. I hadn't thought of this, and hadn't heard this argument before, but it does make sense. I'm visualizing a tree (the computer science one) in which every internal node is aggregating everything below it, so is the generalist for everything that goes on below, and at the same when viewed from the perspective of the parent node(s), it is usually collapsed into a single black-box abstraction, and hence a specialist in the function of that subtree as seen in the larger context.
Lot of interesting comments here. My views are similar to what Neeran and Devika have said here. In my opinion, the days of the generalist manager are far gone. I like the term versatilist which refers to having deep expertise in 1-2 disciplines & broad appreciation of multiple disciplines. This allows one to 'see things' more clearly & communicate across fields. Not having reasonably deep expertise in one area is a liability... you need to understand one thing well to have a shot at appreciating other things. I have written a post on this- https://learningandlife.substack.com/p/no-generalists-please?r=qhq0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
This is interesting and refreshing discussion. My take is "it depends".
1. If you have passion for a narrow subject, being specialist is good idea.
2. If you like to work with systems then being a generalist with ability to zoom when needed otherwise remaining in from bird's eye view mode helps.
3. In established market, contrarian stance can help a new comer. Being generalist in existing specialist market and vice versa.
I second what Mr. Anand said. I work in a startup as a very early employee. I have worked on HR, Customer/Investor Calls, Setting up SFTP for client data transfer to building a full fledged containerized application hosted over cloud.
I believe being a generalist helps you learn multiple facets.
I believe that the answer to this question depends on the phase of your life. In the early stage of your career, it is better to be a generalist. As you get in the second phase of your career, it is better to be a specialist.
Similar to the "strong-opinions-weakly-held" philosophy, I feel that one should specialize but at all times have enough breadth and situational awareness so that you can do 3 things: 1. Know enough about a bunch of other areas to be able to cross fertilize ideas between your specialization and the other areas, 2. Sense coming shifts so that you know when it is time to change your specialization, and 3. Already know enough about your new area of specialization that you can hit the ground running.
Anand: A counter view... If you consider that the benefits of being a generalist come from the ability (wisdom?) to connect the dots across areas, generate insights, synthesize solutions, etc. -- your typical early-career person may not be ready or mature enough to do that.
If you specialize early in your career, BUT change your specialization after achieving depth in it (e.g. after every 3-4 years), then I think you'd be better prepared to contribute as a generalist in the second half of your career.
A specialist (without the broad knowledge in diverse areas) looks at the world through binoculars. We limit ourself to a very narrow field.
Instead look at the world through the lenses of the giant clam. It has hundreds of eyespots. It is constantly looking in every direction.
We should be allowed to explore diverse interests and follow as many of them as able. Only when you bring things together from completely unrelated fields, you create something new.
Systems should be in place to encourage exploration at early stages of life. And should help us choose a specialisation (if inclined) later.
Not during studies. Not during junior years of career. Later.
Award-winning creative and artist Graham Fink talks about creativity with no borders in this 9 minute video. https://youtu.be/ldYe-1JLAqQ
Intresting discussion. Nowadays we see a growing need for expert-generalist. A mix of both worlds. Not restricting yourself to one particularly field, but developing expert in multiple fields. Helps connect dots for better ideation and you can never get redundant, as long as you choose the right areas to build expertise. Similar to Navin's thoughts.
- Jack of few trades, AND Master of One.
Yes. Jack of few and master of 1 would be the T shape that Bhuvan has mentioned earlier. Jack of few and master of 2 would be the 𝜋 shape that he mentioned. Vishnu has also talked about versatilist as opposed to generalist.
In my opinion when you look at the need of industry today it is necessary to possess knowledge of all the fields around you in order to be able to connect the dots and understand your relevance in order to perform better, the specialists will be required in order to create generalists in the future, to give an example one can create an algorithm to help other do that function equally effective who might be at different skill levels.
These day's the discussion is often about T or π shaped skills, sometimes about I