Generalists vs. specialists
December 1, 2008 · Chris Peters
Everyone has the choice in their career to either go really deep into a topic (specialist) or to learn a little bit about a bunch of topics (generalist). Both types of workers are needed for different scenarios.
Everyone has the choice in their career to either go really deep into a topic (specialist) or to learn a little bit about a bunch of topics (generalist). Both types of workers are needed for different scenarios.
Yesterday, I was talking to a generalist who had a funny comment:
The generalist route has worked very well for me so far. People think I’m smart because I know stuff about a lot of different things. The thing is that if they talked to me for 5 minutes longer about one topic, I would exhaust all of my knowledge about it.
Taking the specialist route is not a bad idea either. Just make sure that a generalist never knows something about your specialty that you don’t know.
