#DEVDiscuss: to Specialize or to Generalize?

I would say: depends on the stage of your career.

For someone starting (<2 y), I would say “generalise” until you get more experience to be able to have more opportunities. Then, once you get more experienced and have found something you really enjoy in specific and believe would be a good place to become an “expert”.

Still, being able to learn new things and do whatever comes is the way to go, in my opinion. Depends also on the market.

I'd say generalize. I know some about a lot of things & I know a ton about very few things. Besides this just being more interesting & fun.... getting over that initial hump of a hello-world case in that technology, finding out the good docs & resources, getting over the intimidation, setting up tooling, etc.... that is 80% of the climb. Knowing what is useful when is so valuable.

Once you know enough to start, it's pretty easy to drill deeper as needed.

Speaking as a someone who partakes in the hiring of developers: Some "specialist" roles, which are not that specialized, are really hard to hire for, but if we look for generalists, we get hundreds of applications.

I think you can learn 1+ "specialties" while still being open to more generalist roles and pursuits. Specializing can open opportunities, and you're never "only" a specialist, it's more how you play the game of career opportunism.

If you take that above info and think about doing some research and pursuing a certain amount of specialization — know a couple things:

• You can dabble in specialization and shift back out of it if it doesn't work.
• You shouldn't do anything you really don't like. You don't have to love every element of your profession, but it's possible to like most of it.

I've generalized a lot, sometimes due to work needing me to shift tasks. Generalizing allows one to form connections between different technologies and I think has helped me to learn even more by giving me a nudge in the new directions.

In my opinion, generalizing is the way to go. The tech moves so fast that even if you specialize, there's a fair chance the thing you specialized in will be outdated within a matter of years. Flexibility and picking up new concepts quickly is the name of the game for developers, IMO.

I do think there's some middle ground on this when it comes to specializing in a higher-level way – specializing in Front-end Development, for example, vs React or Angular specifically. Focus on languages or skillsets, not frameworks, tools, or libraries.

Ultimately, though, I think most devs will naturally specialize over the course of their career based on the things they find most interesting and are most adept at. My advice would be: let it happen organically, and don't feel like you have to choose or force a specialization too early in your career!

The best thing is not to plan to do either. Never pigeonhole yourself, just do whatever you find interesting.

The skill and career journey I've adopted so far is the diamond approach:

As a beginner, it's okay to specialize on one thing before moving to others. But specialization should have its limits.

I started myself in late-2013 as a (HTML and CSS) web developer, learned more about the DOM, and responsive design, before generalizing myself to use more and more web libraries and frameworks.

Getting yourself in either generalization's or specialization's comfort zone is risky, because:

• Generalization could mean that you've tried all of these technologies but still have little average experience on these, and
  • Example: I've learned today's great web frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte, CodeIgniter, Laravel, etc.) but I still don't understand how to optimize my apps created by each framework
• Specialization contains a risk of working with aging pieces of tech
  • Example: I'm doomed as a desktop app/program developer; people are care those smartphones and tablets when I can just make Java-based desktop programs.

This diamond approach is indeed a repeating pattern. After re-specializing yourself from generalization, you'll need to re-generalize again before specializing on another one.

This is great because one day, you'll become a generalist who also specializing on each fields. Or in other words, a multiple-T-shaped developer, or even a comb-shaped one. You can learn new, emerging things very quickly due to your past, specialized experiences. And you'll be different to those who just either want to stick with one or two languages/frameworks or just want to learn as many things as possible.

Why not both? I figure the T-styled person approach is actually viable outside of the HR department.

It's also called 'Generalised Specialist'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills

What is a "generalist"? Can someone describe it in details?

I've been a developer in financial services, scientific measuring device manufacturing, phone apps, web dev, and medical device manufacturing, each time I had to learn new technology, but also used technology I already knew.

I guess that makes me a generailst?

It's great being able to learn about new fields. In my current field is where I want to stay.

I don't know what it would be like to be a specialist. Would I have to only work in one field? Or would I only know one type of technology, like, would I be going from React job to React job?

I guess I'm in the middle of my career, so wanting to settle down now makes sense. On the other hand if everything goes belly up, I know I can manoeuvre into most spaces. I'll never get to be a data scientist/machine learning dev, but I think that's about the only place I wouldn't be able to prove my skills transfer to. Maybe front end, too, as my aesthetic skills are not good, although my basic understanding of UX is OK.

If you're hiring a generalist, I suppose that you've got to consider that maybe it'll be a month before they're proficient with your tech stack if they haven't used it before, but if they have then they'll be up and running as fast as any specialist.

I guess we have to become generalists to become good specialists.
We have to understand the landscape very well to understand how and why its assembled this way, what problems it's causing, understand where the whole thing is going, and what problems will become more pressing.

If I remember my 30+ years development carrier, then I told, time to time I specialize for something, but focus was changed really much, so this give me a general developer knowledge. I started with Basic and goes to direction of Z80 assembly to another path, some time work as graphic designer and later flash developer and lot of other things. Currently my react frontend skill transform to nextjs fullstack. Last month spend of playing with AI - how can I insert into my workflow.

Its a really depends what you want for you carrer or what you like to do in your job. My example I really like to code with JS, I tried java, python, go but any of these make me happy like JS in my work. So i'm focusing in specialize in JS. I think to be a specialize is more easy beacause you have a definied route to follow. When you are a generalize dev you have so many options, this can be confuse in some point.

From my experience I've started with specializing a popular topic instead of generalizing. As I was told by my close circles as be a Go to person on a topic will help you grow initially.

And same also from the book The Dip - by Seth Godin.

Then as my career progressed, I started going generalizing.

After initial steps on the career development a T Shaped approach would be perfect. Later you can go as Pie Shaped (Specializing in 2) and then Comb Shaped (Specializing many)

When I first started as a Laravel developer, I used to worry "Now that I have chosen web development technology, can I specialize even more? Will overspecialization be a good option?”

When it comes to the debate of specialization vs generalization, I believe you should maintain your open-mindedness. Technology is ever evolving, so when the finest new technology is released, what is currently popular may be forgotten and replaced.

If you specialize in one area and become a true expert in it, it's a good path to a successful and lucrative career, and you'll gain both professional and personal satisfaction from it.

Specializing in one area can make you easily bored, so if this happens you might want to consider branching out and learning some generalized skills in the tech sector.

Therefore, my advice to you: push yourself beyond your comfort zone. By pushing the boundaries and leveling up your skills, you’ll keep yourself motivated in your career.