Ask HN: Is it better to be good at many things or great at one thing?

113 点作者 matonias超过 8 年前

Talking about the digital world of course. Young man here, should I learn one thing really good (like back-end programming) or go all out and learn as many things(front-end, 3d, photoshop, back-end etc..) as possible and be okay in all of them.

52 条评论

dasmoth超过 8 年前

> "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."<pre><code> -- Robert Heinlein </code></pre> I've certainly always found being a generalist more satisfying, even if it isn't always what gets rewarded.I wouldn't necessarily restrict this to "the digital world."

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BenoitP超过 8 年前

To quote from the Valve Handbook [1]:> We value “T-shaped” people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T). This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often have to pass on people who are very strong generalists without expertise, or vice versa. An expert who is too narrow has difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really contributing as an individual.Where you choose to be deep should be an area of interest to you and which the market values.[1] <a href="http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...</a>

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fao_超过 8 年前

Honestly? Try to learn as much about everything as you can. I mean every subject, every subfield. What I've found is each effort I made in one subject improved my efforts in others by a significant order of magnitude. With more knowledge you gain more ways of looking at the problems you're faced with and therefore can find more paths to solutions.Each new piece of knowledge you learn will give you a better base from which to learn more, and slowly the amount you are able to learn will increase to help you cope with the load.After a while you gain the ability to reduce a problem you're faced with down to other problems in other disciplines, then things start getting boring because you can already figure out a way to reduce this problem, etc. So at that point it's time to mix it up a little and refocus.Another thing that should be noted is that you should always make sure that you are out of your depth with at least one thing you are studying. You can only really improve by pushing yourself. However remember that you cannot push yourself constantly, sometimes you need a break. So in doing this, you should be driven by your own interest.What I have found is that I am not necessarily able to do everything at once, so I end up doing a rotation of things I find interesting at that moment. Eventually I'll either discard some topic or problem or such, because I don't find it interesting or I will find something new that I find more interesting. If things get stagnant, mix it up a little!I've been doing this for approximately the last five years, and I think the payoffs have been great, and I have learned so much more than I think I would have otherwise. However I have nothing to compare to! So we cannot be sure =)Do what interests you.

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Unbeliever69超过 8 年前

I am the consummate jack-of-all-trades. It is a disorder. And it irks me EVERY day that I'm not amazing at one single thing. I am SO envious of people that possess a single-minded focus and the older I get the more I regret not finding that singular passion. The problem is...I get bored with one thing. Or at least, I'm never crossed that painful membrane of boredom to find bliss in single mastery.

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verbify超过 8 年前

I recommend reading 'The Wealth of Nations'. As an economics textbook, it is fairly dated, but it makes the point that ten people with a specific specialization can do more than ten people all doing the same work at once. Therefore the value you can provide increases with specialization as you can be part of a team than can provide more.My salary increased once I marketed myself as having a specific specialization, but the difficulty of finding a job increased too.It is a basic application of supply vs demand. As, say, a PHP developer, you're competing with millions of other PHP developers around the world. There are plenty of jobs, but there are also plenty of people who are competing with you, driving your price downwards.If you narrow it down to knowing a lot about a very specific framework or PHP system - for example, you know a lot about Laravel or Drupal, then you're competing with fewer people, and people are willing to pay more for an expert, but there are also fewer potential jobs.There's also an associated risk. If you specialize in Laravel and Laravel goes out of style, you will have to remarket yourself as a PHP dev again... Some people specialized intensely in Microsoft Silverlight, and they ended up like this - <a href="http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/07/28/betting-on-the-right-horse/" rel="nofollow">http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/07/28/betting-on-the-righ...</a> (it's not a total loss, as some programming paradigms work across languages). With the risk comes increased reward.

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highfestiva超过 8 年前

An expert without basic generalist know-how is just ignorant. An expert in only a single field is single-minded (think "SAP expert":). A generalist without expertise is just average.Do both, as people always have. But start out a generalist to get an understanding of what is good to specialize in. Then pick 2, 3, 4 diverse areas to home in on.

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T-A超过 8 年前

Wouldn't you know it, it's best to be both: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills</a>

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SixSigma超过 8 年前

Me: 30 years professional programmingCertified AutoCAD technicianCertified TIG WelderDegree in Supply Chain ManagementCertified Bicycle Wheel BuilderPotterWood TurnerProficient in 3D ModellingLaunched an ISP in 1995 that is still goingProject leader for a charity market garden supplying produce to a food bankAssistant director / Assistant Producer of a feature film released on DVD (you can buy it on Amazon)Producer of 4 music videos that have appeared on MTVMade most of my own furniture from scratch - bed, table, freestanding kitchen unit, chairsWas resident VJ at a successful rave series for 5 yearsAppeared in stage plays for paying publicQualified scuba diverArrested twice on TV on environmental protestsOccasional data analyst for a Superbike racing team at the national levelThis isn't even my final form & this list is incompleteLive life, box sets are for the dead to get buried in.

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JohnBooty超过 8 年前

Well, I'm going to cheat.Be somewhere between "mediocre and good" at many things, and be really good at one or two things. If you can be great at one or two things, that is nice, but not strictly necessary.There's a lot to be said for generalists, or "T-shaped" people. Every single project requires a large breadth of skills all up and down the stack... and a lot of moving pieces (client, server, markup, JS, CSS, blah blah blah) that work together.There is a place for specialists, too. In fact, we need them to make the world go 'round. But... there aren't as many of those places.Here's a real-world example. I literally just finished troubleshooting this issue. Finding the bug and developing a fix involved (1) our iOS client (2) our React web client (3) our server-side auth, implemented in Rails (4) a messaging library with both client and server components (5) some other bullshit I can't even remember at this point.I'm not the best at any of those things. I'm barely even good at them. Honestly, I don't even fully understand the auth fix that our brilliant (and I don't mean that sarcastically) programmer implemented. But I understood enough of those moving pieces to isolate the problem and get things into his hands.It'd be really fucking great if I was the world's leading iOS developer or whatever, but if that's all I knew, this issue wouldn't have been fixed.

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distracted_boy超过 8 年前

I think having good grasp in different domains and tools can be good for you both career wise and for your own sake (entrepreneurship, creativity etc). But it can also be a disadvantage depending on where you work.When I first graduated from the university (at 23), I got a job as an IT support guy in a growing company (80+ employees at the time). I was the only IT support and my job was to help people with their issues and maintain the IT infrastructure. I managed to solve all types of issues which I guess people started to recognise. This was fine. However, since I also knew programming, my managers wanted me to help out on development (PHP), to ease the load on the developers. As time went on I became better with our framework and started to get more more complex programming assignments, while still being IT-support. For me this became a real struggle, completing programming tasks on time, maintaining IT infrastructure (servers, network, buying hardware, phone calls) and helping people with their issues. Somehow I managed, which my managers recognised (I assume, and hope), so I got additional assignments regarding "Big Data", basically get information, store it, connect the data with other data sources and so on.At the end I was doing everything with IT. Data science, development, IT support, system administration and more. The reason it become like this, at least what I think, is because I had a sufficient grasp on most domains and tools so I just continued to get more stuff to do. When I finally quit, I actually realised that I was not feeling that great. I could feel the stress inside me slowly diminish.

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mcv超过 8 年前

Both have their value. Personally I prefer broad over deep, but that's me. You need to figure out what works best for you.Deep has the advantage that when specialists are in demand, you're really in demand. It's good to have someone on the team who knows absolutely everything about the thing you do. The downside is that when technology or your career moves on, you know nothing. You're stuck doing that one thing, and may have a harder time getting into something else.And broadness has a specialization of its own. Knowing multiple things is particularly valuable if you know how to connect those things. If you can develop front-end with an eye on what's easier for the back-end, if you can design the graphics that you will need, rather than having to wait for someone else to get around to it. Knowing different unconnected things is less valuable, but even there you may find unexpected connections. But for the deep technical stuff, you may find that you'll have to ask a real expert.

leonroy超过 8 年前

This'll sound like a cop out but it really depends. Are you going into academia? If so it takes years of specialization to get good enough to make a meaningful contribution in the form of innovative and good quality research.Are you planning on going into startups? In which case jack of all trades does very nicely!The key is to be very good at some things but to also keep your eyes open and learn things outside your comfort zone - you never know where your new found knowledge can take you and often times it can make you better at whatever you chose to specialize in.So senior architects who write APIs - for fucks sake (showing my background here!) - write the prototype client library - it will improve your API design skills.Backend devs should write a front end or two or at least do some pair programming with the front end guys.Bottom line - be very good at some things - but be open to learning new things and getting out of your comfort zone.

cies超过 8 年前

For yourself: be good at many things. It will make you happy.For your (potential) employer: be great at one thing, that they are willing to pay you a bundle for. Then use that money to buy all services you need to be happy.

Franciscodr超过 8 年前

Everybody goes to the general doctor, but want treatment from the specialist one. Usually a balanced combination between some general knowledge of many things and specialist in one thing is the best. Beware some people can be specialist in more than one thing but they are not typical, not the best always: <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_...</a>

JoelMcCracken超过 8 年前

More food for thought:<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=generalist&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=generalist&sort=byPopularity&p...</a><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rennaissance%20man&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rennaissance%20man&sort=byPopu...</a><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=specialist%20vs%20generalist&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=specialist%20vs%20generalist&s...</a>Personally, I like having a variety of skills. I want to be able to dip in anywhere on a project and be productive.You'll naturally have focuses, or drips of paint, which I see is referenced in another post. Your focus really can only be on one thing at a time, and presumably you're not just learning for its own sake, you will be learning to accomplish some goal, which will drive the learning.I'd rather work with a well-rounded engineer than one that is a poor communicator, tool user, etc but has very excellent skills in a very specific area.YMMV. There is lots of value in having deep skill sets. There is also a difference between being a "dabbler"/"knowing enough to be dangerous" and being a competent engineer.

dsiegel2275超过 8 年前

Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) wrote an insightful piece on career advice in his blog a few years ago. In it he asserts that to have an extraordinary career you should become very good at two different things.I believe this article popped up on HN a couple of years back:<a href="http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html" rel="nofollow">http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...</a>

agentgt超过 8 年前

I'm somewhat reminded of some Einstein quotes (probably dubious but whatever):"You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one."and"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."At the same time:"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."and"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."So I say follow your curiosity. If it wants to go deep go deep. If it wants to go broad go broad.

tduk超过 8 年前

Find something that is a good fit for you and in demand (preferably rising), avoid niche and fads. Be good at that one thing and a handful of directly related tech. Keep yourself informed about other stuff to the degree where you can hold an intelligent informed conversation and contribute to decisions. Use your spare time to satisfy intellectual itches. Expect periods of boredom in any job. Look after your spine.

6DM超过 8 年前

I would recommend you start with something you're the most curious about and/or find the most useful in your day job. It's like this, you're hired to bring value to a company so it should make you productive if you know it better. Get to know that well, seek out edge cases and new techniques. If you put your time into it, you will gain that knowledge fast.The important part is not to stop when you're finished. Pick up the next thing and do the same. After you go through a few phases you will have enough general knowledge to apply in many areas.In this way you start a specialist and become a generalist. You'll know fully well what your tools and technologies will be capable of and you will be able to give reasonably accurate estimates.As far as I can tell, unless you have an eye for design, it's generally easier to start on the back end and move to the front end. This way you can be productive and are able to move between companies. Front-end is still changing a lot. But there are a lot of promising releases/tools in the works that are making getting started a lot easier.

Jaruzel超过 8 年前

Over a 25 year career I've worked on most key Microsoft technologies, but started out my work life as a Sys Admin for DEC VAXs using VMS. I'm also conversant with Linux, and can pretty much pick up anything IT orientated quite easily - I can design and build almost anything if I put my mind to it.I see myself as an IT generalist, but in the workplace I have to specialize. Currently I focus on making Single Identities work across systems for large Corporates. It's quite niche, and at times monotonous work (the design is pretty much the same wherever you go), however in order to be GOOD at whichever specialism I'm pitching at the time I heavily draw on the cross knowledge I've gained over the years. This extra knowledge has ended up being invaluable in separating myself from the herd in the recruitment marketplace.So in short. Early on you should generalize and learn as much about stuff that interests you; later on (10+ years) start to specialize based your preferences (or mortgage size, or whatever).

cousin_it超过 8 年前

The most successful people are often specialists, but that's because they took a high-risk bet and won. To maximize your average success (rather than chance of runaway success), it seems more efficient to be a generalist, due to diminishing returns from any single skill. Just take care to be actually good at many things, not average at many things.

p333347超过 8 年前

Be it web application development in specific, or software engineering in general, or even in life itself, I'd say its much better to be good at many things than great at one thing. For one, it makes a person self sufficient and independent. Assuming one is a curious autodidact, one can always improve or learn things that they aren't good at yet. Next, it sort of gives you a perspective from various points that makes you appreciate things better. Finally, it is a humbling experience (which is good in life) as it makes you realize how much there is to learn - the more you know things the more you know you know nothing effect. Of course, one must not get perturbed when derided as "jack of all master of none". On the flip side, one must also not go around town calling oneself a polymath or a renaissance man - those days are over, at least with established fields of knowledge - as it would be equally ridiculous.

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perlgeek超过 8 年前

If you want to build a reputation for yourself, it is much easier in a small niche. It's easier to be know as "the" guy who does awesome, interactive audio in D3.js (just sputtering stuff here) than to build a reputation as a "the" awesome frontend developer.Once you have your small niche in a firm grip, you can expand outwards.

scardine超过 8 年前

In consulting/freelancing it is better to know many things, but market yourself as a specialist instead of a generalist.

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xiaoma超过 8 年前

Professionally it's far better to be great at one thing (or a clump of related things). The market doesn't if your skills are kind of close to a professionally marketable level in many areas. On the other hand, it generously rewards those who are the best at any task people care to pay for. Find your strongest comparative advantage and milk it for everything you can. If you're good at and bad at writing, then be a musician, allow your writing to remain horrible and work with horrible musicians who can write.In the personal domain, the situation is the opposite. It's just not possible to outsource being healthy, financially sensible, romantic or a good friend to someone else. If you're really struggling with one of those areas of life, it's worth it to work on fixing up your weaknesses rather than just further developing your strengths.

HeyLaughingBoy超过 8 年前

It really depends on what you want to do (i.e., your personal definition of "better")Last time I was looking for a job, the recruiter came back to me and said "I can find lots of jobs that need your skills, but none that will pay the salary you want."So we discussed what my skills were. I was looking for a SW dev job, but I have degrees & experience in EE, SW, lots of time working with integrating SW, EE, and Mechanical motion control, more experience working with biochemistry and understanding how various physical movements can affect the way a reaction proceeds, and the repeatability, etc. of the output.Finally she says, "hmmm, you're really a Systems engineer with a Software engineer title." Then a new set of job opportunities (that wanted to pay what I wanted to be paid) showed up.And somehow I ended up taking a position as a software engineer/Manager... go figure.

teekert超过 8 年前

Depends on your wishes, I myself am a biochemist moved into molecular biology moved into biophysics moved into micro-fluidics moved into data-analysis.Now I'm a person that talks to many specialists and brings ideas together to create new research paths to go into. I talk a lot, I write a lot and do some programming. According to tests I'm an extroverted person with a short attention span who is motivated by frequent changes. My current position requires this of me.If you prefer to just focus on getting a single, (complex) job done, introverted, away from other people, you're better of specializing imho. Me, I get new ideas by talking with others and can enjoy meetings. Many of my colleagues can't, they just want to get their current task done ASAP.

collyw超过 8 年前

Focus on a few things early then narrow it down to the things you prefer (or make you more employable) as your career progresses. The concept of a T shaped developer seemed popular a couple of years back (in blog posts at least).

anilgulecha超过 8 年前

2 complimentary skills give you the most bang for your buck. Front end + photoshop, or backend + systems design. (You could also find a complimentary skill that isn't technical.)

TheLarch超过 8 年前

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." --Bruce LeeI am not sure if this submission is tongue in cheek or not.

eranation超过 8 年前

I follow the principle of trying to be (and hire) T shaped people. Wide generalist knowledge (knows a little of everythin) but one topic where they go deep. You can be specializing in backend programming but I would expect you to be able to hack a quick front end fix. You can't get away without the minimum of basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL and Linux, you also must know basics of security (CSRF, XSS, SQLI etc). Then you can go deep on anything you want.

ahmetyas01超过 8 年前

Be good at what you do and know a little from everything = Good CEO Be good at what you do = Great Employee Know a little from everything = World wide Loser.

tugberkk超过 8 年前

My recommendation is personal only, and does not include any "business-wise" suggestions. I would say being good in different things is better. This brings a simple problem tho, you are going to forget what you are not using. But, "learning" is an experience and a good one. So I would say learning and knowing a good chunk of any/everything will help you even in specializing.

cyanbane超过 8 年前

There is going to be a comment on this that is really good from someone who has spent a lot of life thinking on this topic. You will also probably be able to aggregate a whole lot of opinions from people who may think about this every now and then. Which do you think will be more informative?

danieltillett超过 8 年前

I have noticed that the world doesn’t work like this and talent is very unevenly distributed - those people great at one thing seem to be great at lots of other things.Extreme specialisation seems to be correlated with unhappiness so it might be better to be good at many things if you want to have a happy life.

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jasonkostempski超过 8 年前

"What's the secret to getting in? I can't tell you. You have to find out for yourself."

pm24601超过 8 年前

I think the key is to get past the "mediocre/o.k." skill level .The problem with going deep is picking the right discipline. Since you may pick wrong initially, going broad first allows a chance to pivot to a different skill to go deep on.The first skill is the ability to learn in a fast organized manner.

cauterized超过 8 年前

That depends on what your goals are and what interests you.There are things only specialists can do and things only generalists can do.There are people who are equally interested in a lot of things and people who are particularly fascinated by a single topic.Which are you?

cerrelio超过 8 年前

Either/or. Just care enough to be good at anything at all. Additionally, be good at something that doesn't involve work skills. Work isn't everything.

id122015超过 8 年前

If you choose one thing, choose politics, because no matter what a genius you are, the HR department has the other kind of reason. Social Justice Warriors, you name it..

aj_nikhil超过 8 年前

Start with many things and keep on doing them honestly and humbly.. sooner or later you will become master in few ...

psadri超过 8 年前

It's even better to be able to become good at things as circumstances demand them.

MollyR超过 8 年前

Most places calling me about jobs want a full stack developer.

jkingsbery超过 8 年前

I've known successful people that have done both.

programminggeek超过 8 年前

Yes.

mirekrusin超过 8 年前

Is the sum of small numbers greater than a large number?

dilemma超过 8 年前

To be an entrepreneur you need to know a little about a lot of things.To be employed, you'll do better as a specialist. If you pick the right specialization.

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trentmb超过 8 年前

Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.<a href="http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html" rel="nofollow">http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...</a>

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khattam超过 8 年前

You can't be good at many things, mostly because people who spend all their time doing one thing will outdo you; so at best you'll be mediocre at many things. At worst, you'll think you're good at all those things.Be mediocre at many things and specialize to some extent on few things.

nullundefined超过 8 年前

It doesn't matter if you have amazing depth in XYZ or you know about many things, no one cares and in one year all your knowledge will most likely be obsolete.If you're going to "learn" something, make it universal. Learn to communicate (written and verbal), make friends, have experiences and learn to be empathetic and check your ego at the door.The truth is, life is short and you will never master anything let alone become great in many things, so why try? What's so bad about being technically "decent" and exude the universal skills listed above? I'd hire that person any day.

fatdog超过 8 年前

When you truly master something, the understanding of mastery is a surprisingly portable skill.It can make you seem like a generalist, when in fact you are just a transcendent specialist.

circadian超过 8 年前

Do what you feel happy doing!In terms of thinking on a path for your career, think only of whether you are putting all your eggs in one basket. If a job role later becomes difficult to get / stay employed in, and you can't adapt, then that's the most likely problem you'll face.I have always tried to be interested in a lot of things, so that I can turn my hand to new things once I need a new challenge. It has worked well for me so far ;-)