Specialist vs Generalist

Specialization is for people who want to become very good at something. Life's too short for most people to become competent at a wide range of activities while still becoming good enough at one thing to change the world. Grigori Perleman and Warren Buffett are not generalists.

Remember the adage:A specialist will tend to underestimate how much a generalist can accomplish, when they choose to specialize, and a generalist will tend to underestimate how deep any given specialty really goes.

Just remember the adage:A specialist will tend to underestimate a generalist's ability to specialize, when they choose to focus on one thing; A generalist will tend to underestimate how deep any given specialty actually extends.

While these sayings are fun, and sort of true, they are kind of not useful. You should be a jack of various trades, a master of some. Specialization is for insects :)

Well. We can't all be generalists.

Yes, though there is value to specialization

I'm starting to be more and more convinced that "overspecialization" is a non-existent beast. I've never met a specialist that was unable to pick up necessary knowledge and skills because they were too specialized. In fact being a specialist would allow them to use analogies and metaphors from their own discipline to get a much better understanding of new topics.

don't think of it as being a generalist. think of it more like multiple specialisms.

Counterpoint: Breadth.(...Don't polarize on one end of the Specialist vs Generalist debate.)Since improvement of experience and quality of output is roughly logarithmic, it is (depending on the specialisation of the task at hand) better to have a person that has worked ten years to be 7/10 in 5 displines than 10/10 in one and 2/10 in the remaining 4.Of course, if you only care about the one discipline, get the 10/10 guy. But in real use cases, things are only oc

Just because you specialize in a field doesn't mean that you can't be a good generalist.