What Is a Wildcard Person?
17 years ago, there was a popular essay about this sort of person, and the label at the time was &quot;Free Electron&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;randsinrepose.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;free-electron&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;randsinrepose.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;free-electron&#x2F;</a><p>Before that, they were known as &quot;generalists&quot;, autodidacts, polymaths, etc.<p>The thing is that pretty much any clever person that&#x27;s easily invested in novel things can become one of these people, so this label isn&#x27;t reserved for people who are generalists, it is reserved for people who are not specialists.<p>If you care about things like income and career progression, do <i>not</i> let yourself become one of these people. They aren&#x27;t valued, and it doesn&#x27;t take a lot of staring at job postings or talking to hiring managers to figure out why.<p>Well-run organizations -- that is, organizations that can afford to pay good money for talent -- have clearly defined roles for people, and need only a few generalists to handle the nitty-gritties of cross-department communications and management.<p>The organizations that <i>most</i> need generalists are the ones that are constantly struggling to get their crap working right, so they need people who can do a little bit of everything, and as a consequence, they also can&#x27;t afford to pay such people a lot of money.<p>It is much easier for a specialist to argue their value than a generalist. I believe there was a frontpage &quot;Ask HN&quot; about this today, probably why this article was posted now.<p>If however you can decouple happiness and satisfaction from income, and chasing novelties makes you happy, then by all means, keep doing what you love.<p>You&#x27;ll just never make the same kind of money as the person that knows Kubernetes backwards and forwards and not much else.