A long time ago, I read an article by Daniel Irvine : A generalist is born when a specialist becomes bored, and I immediately understood the generalist vs. specialist issue he is addressing – even though I’m not a developer like Daniel.
Daniel has one view of when a specialist becomes a generalist, and I have another view of how and when it can happen – but the conclusive arguments are pretty much the same.
Around 2001 I was installing and configuring Linux on Mainframe and various other open source solutions on all IBM hardware platforms, and I started with Linux as my “specialist subject”.
Because we were a very few good men looking at Linux/open source, we were asked to implement solutions which meant that we configured databases, web servers, did some programming, configured networks, etc.
It wasn’t really a question about being a specialist with focus on one technology, i.e. databases, it was more a question about being able to deliver a working solution to customers, and perhaps also being specialised in a large subject as open source.
Failure wasn’t really an option, so if there were any lack of knowledge, you just had to find out and share your findings with your peers.
You needed to be curious to succeed, and if you are curios you will perhaps also want to know more about the input to tasks and also what happens to the output of tasks – the bigger picture, and that was exactly what happened during my specialist role.
And what better way to ensure such knowledge than to get involved, so I produced some one-pagers for the customer engagement teams containing info to the customer sessions. Soon after I moved to the Architect team and finally ended up as Technical Project Manager.
One of the arguments from Daniel is that: “A generalist was a specialist at some point. A generalist is born when a specialist becomes bored.”, meaning if a specialist gets bored with current technology, or tasks, he/she will start looking for something interesting and will soon be on the way to become a generalist.
Perhaps because of interest in another technology, but also because the specialist has come to a point where there are very few subjects or features to fuel the appetite, and when that happens the specialist is on the way to a generalist role.
Question is then, whether it is good or bad to be a specialist or generalist? Which is better?
To me a specialist is like a wheel man in F1. But even in F1, which is quite specialised, there are backups (and generalist wheel guys) to ensure that the solution is working (car is running).
To quote Daniel Irvine: “beyond specialism lies generalism”.
