To become a specialist or remain a generalist

Andy, what is your view on becoming a specialist versus remaining a generalist?

I maintain being a generalist helps for the company but you should be special in at least one product/technology

Two it's better than one. Becoming a generalist it's great, you can face many problems for a variety of technologies, and mastering one, makes you an expert to solve really deep problems with that technology.

It depends on what you mean by "specialist". Unfortunately the way it is used often appears to mean "someone who knows only one thing".

If I ran a business, I would really not want to hire that kind of specialist.

It it better if we are both generalist and specialist.
It's good to able to do many things. So we're all-in-one package that can do all things that 3-5 different people can do (but we can do one thing at a time of course).
But if we want to be more successful, we need to be a specialist at least in one field to further differentiate ourselves from others.

Only being a generalist is not enough because we can do one thing at a time. We may be able to do many kind of things, but it's probably slower compare to 3 people do 3 things simultaneously.
But if we're a specialist, we can do somethings that normal/average folks cannot do, that increases our values and make us more difficult to be replaced.

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:It it better if we are both generalist and specialist.
It's good to able to do many things. So we're all-in-one package that can do all things that 3-5 different people can do (but we can do one thing at a time of course).
But if we want to be more successful, we need to be a specialist at least in one field to further differentiate ourselves from others.

Only being a generalist is not enough because we can do one thing at a time. We may be able to do many kind of things, but it's probably slower compare to 3 people do 3 things simultaneously.
But if we're a specialist, we can do somethings that normal/average folks cannot do, that increases our values and make us more difficult to be replaced.

Agree. It is better to have the mixture of both.

I can't really answer because it's such a vague definition. In Chad Fowler's book, The Passionate Programmer, he suggests you need to be both.

You're going to wind up knowing a wide variety of things, and you're going to know some things in depth. It's just the nature of the job.