Generalist versus Specialist

In today’s world, with everything from blue collar jobs to high technology jobs being outsourced overseas, there are a lot of experts talking about how to cope with this situation. Many authors such as Barbara Moses who wrote Career Intelligence, and Daniel Pink author of A Whole New Mind have recommended you become move away from being a strictly technical person – getting into project management, developing ‘soft’ skills (right-brained skills), and becoming a generalist to name a few. While I believe people can be successful in pretty much any area with enough planning and effort, the key to getting the high rates is to specialize. You might have heard the saying ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. There’s a reason this saying exists!

Let’s assume you work all day and have some evenings and weekends free. You’re much better off in my opinion taking more courses in your specialty, networking (with product salesmen and consulting firms as I mention in my e-book), developing your reputation in online technology forums, writing a blog, etc. Feel free to work on your Emotional Intelligence, project management skills and other right-brained activities but don’t spend too much time in those areas. (If you don’t agree with me about specializing and are making more than $200K as a generalist working for someone else, please drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you).

I think most people like the idea of lowering their risk. They think being a generalist will allow you to do a variety of jobs, change careers more easily, lower your risk to outsourcing, and be more valuable. I think there are many negatives to being a generalist – you have more competition, you get paid average wages and possibly are more susceptible to layoffs. Certain roles like architects and integration specialists need to know a variety of technologies. I still feel this is a specialist role because it is mainly to do with certain technology areas (eg. SOA Architect, Integration Architect). While I don’t feel that being a specialist is that risky, with more risk comes more reward. Think about money market funds. They’re pretty safe and yet you get a pretty low return. Invest in bonds which are more risky and you can get a better return. Invest in the markets and you can get an even better return with more risk.

In my case, I specialize in Software AG products (formerly known as webMethods). If the company went under and the product died (highly unlikely since it’s top-rated by Gartner), then I could find a company that uses the competitor product (like Tibco) and become an employee for a year or so. Then I’d be right back in the contracting game again! So many of the technical skills are transferable, such as integration skills, B2B/EAI experience, SAP integration, database integration, file handling, XML, XSLT, FTP/HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP, etc.

If you’re an IT professional like myself, you probably would like to stay as a technical person but you may have felt pressure to move up ‘the ladder’. It might be because you want to make more money as a project manager, take on more responsibility, or move away from technical skills due to pressures of outsourcing. I am proof you can stay technical, take on responsibility, and make more money than most of the managers and employees out there.

Bottom Line: Be a specialist. I did it and so can you!