Being a generalist sucks
Clients don’t understand the value they get from hiring a generalist who can work across multiple specialist areas
There I said it. And it feels good.
I’m specifically referring to technology generalists, often developers, who can work across different stages of the SDLC and turn their hand to multiple different technologies.
Whilst it is certainly possible for some people to jump from specialism to specialism with relative ease, and you might even be one of those people, I would no longer recommend it.
Or at least caution against it.
Being a generalist
I’ve been a generalist for most of my professional life, happily identifying with the label and believing it aligned well with the inherent way I saw the world.
My CV espoused the same, “a broad-based generalist” or “T-shaped individual” accompanied by an extensive catalogue of disparate skills. XSLT, XML, batchfile programming, JS, rust, HTML, Jenkins, Selenium etc. Believing all this was somehow valued and useful to potential employers.
I even owned a relatively successful software development agency that prided itself on being able to do full-stack software development. Often finding myself traversing between SQL Server, .Net core, Vanilla JS and CI/CD pipelines all in a single day.
Perhaps calling myself a ‘generalist’ isn’t really the correct description, as each of these technical areas in and of itself is a complete specialist skill. Perhaps it’s more about being able to quickly pick up, and put down new specialisms with relative ease.
But I digress.
Downsides to being a generalist
I found that clients didn’t really understand the value they got from hiring a generalist who could work across multiple specialist areas.
Rather than being rewarded for quickly and competently solving deep technical problems across the whole SDLC and up and down the technical stack, I experienced clients who didn’t appreciate the actual complexity of their software, key person dependency, understaffing of projects and difficulty delivering when tighter deadlines were imposed.
In terms of my software agency, the several relatively large and financially successful projects I “won” early on in the development of the agency ultimately went on to hide the deep problems that come from being too keen to chase, and accept, every passing opportunity.
Or perhaps more accurately, from having too much of an undifferentiated offering in a very competitive, specialised marketplace.
I’ve heard it said in the marketing industry, ‘if you are selling everything to everyone, then no one is buying’. I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.
Writing advertising copy was difficult, identifying and targeting buyers was difficult, generating sales conversations was difficult. Tailoring each pitch was time-consuming, learning new and non-transferable skills in each engagement wasteful, and failing to build and grow something valuable over time was very disappointing.
Conclusion
The software agency was financially viable and traded for 6 years.
However, the ‘hand-to-mouth’ existence wasn’t sustainable nor enjoyable so I voluntarily closed the doors when I started to see this more clearly.
I found that clients didn’t really understand the value they got from hiring a generalist who could work across multiple specialist areas.
But the downsides were significant and I’m glad I won’t be doing it again.
I’m Frank, an autistic software engineer and owner of Better Software UK, a software requirements consultancy.
