Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
I feel strongly about this topic because I&#x27;m at the point in my career where I&#x27;ve done several different positions instead of getting better at one and I&#x27;m wondering if I made a mistake.<p>I started off in the software field as a developer. I&#x27;ve been in the software field for almost 10 years but I&#x27;ve only actually spent two years as a full time developer. I&#x27;ve also done project management, product management, marketing, customer support, and management. I find myself struggling to fill one of those individual roles because I don&#x27;t have the same level of experience as those who have dedicated themselves to those for the full ten years.<p>I&#x27;m currently a VP of Engineering for a small company. I know most would probably say that I&#x27;ve made it, but I&#x27;m looking for my next opportunity and struggling. It&#x27;s hard to get a job at a larger (200+ employee) company as each role filled is expected to be specialized and focused. At a smaller company or startup, though, I kick the crap out of anyone else applying because I know so much more about the business in general and can wear many different hats.<p>In addition, I feel a strong benefit is that my experience enhances my ability in each other role. For instance, if I&#x27;m working on a marketing email campaign, I can use my developer skills to pull relevant data from the application that helps me focus my targeting. If I&#x27;m developing, I will specifically build small helpful tools for customer support and marketing departments because I already know what they want and they don&#x27;t know they can have it. It takes a small amount of time but provides a big value.<p>I would probably also have a leg up on starting my own business compared to someone who has a deep specialized knowledge of enterprise level applications but no idea how to put together a customer support and good user experience.<p>Still, we are always looking at the greener grass, and there are times when I wish I could just apply for a senior developer role at a larger company and focus on one thing. Somehow, I don&#x27;t think that my lack of React experience will be made up for by letting them know that I will be able to directly interact with the customers or set up marketing campaigns. They already have 5+ people doing those things.