Specliast VS Generalist.

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Hello Everyone,

Just wanted everyone's opinion on specialist vs generalist.

You see I have known some people that have specialised earlier on in their careers without getting a solid foundation which did them good.

For an example I know people that came out straight from uni and started as graduate crm or sharepoint developers and since they being working in this platform for couple of years 2-3 they have become senior sharepoint or senior crm consultants or developers.

Just want to know what happens when the technology dies out.

Lets say someone who went to tech school or did certs and became a VMWARE specialist since their first day in their career and over time in 2 -3 years became a senior VMWARE consultant what happens when VMWARE dies down or if the technology is not in demand. Since they do not have a foundation do they need to go back into helpdesk or desktop support or something.

Just want everyones opinion on it.

I wonder how now adays the cobol or pascal developers are doing now.

 

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Generally you don't want to be a COBOL or Pascal developer now, your options would be extremely limited.

This is an orthogonal point to your argument though. COBOL and Pascal were general purpose languages in their day, it does not relate to early specialisation, unless you term 'software development' as specialisation, which I do not.

Sharepoint is a specialisation, but to be a good sharepoint developer you would need many generalist skills, C#, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, ASP .NET, SQL, Software Engineering, etc. So as long as you kept all your skills up to date it should not be an issue.

I would expect the same with Vmware, to be a good Vmware admin you'd need to understand networking, hardware, backup, security, powershell, etc. So you should be ok if something else takes its place. You could not be a good Vmware admin without these skills.

I've yet to meet these people without foundation knowledge that land top jobs. I used to see some developers with very little education and also testers that cannot write basic scripts that used to land average jobs.

 

yeah I built my foundation first (first 3 years in my career) then specialised in the public cloud.

in nz there aren't much specialist public cloud gigs so I am trying overseas, but in nz they only believe I am suited for intermediate level roles but I do get senior interviews and I come close

 

I think when you start your career you have to be a generalist to find out what you are most interested in. I was a generalist for many years then I clapped my eyes on VMware infrastructure 3 as it was then. Now i'm and EUC consultant and my job is constantly evolving from just mainly XenApp to later on XenDesktop, VMware View XenMobile and airwatch hypervisors, hardware and surround technologies, not to mention the changes in the base OS. I think all jobs evolve even "specialist" jobs although if you only job is one single technology then you are doomed.

I think its down to the individual to spot new interesting things on the horizon and following your interests will dictate if you eventually specialise in something or dabble in a bit of everything.

 

I'll add my 2p here

I've been an IT generalist for 15 years, now I am stuck as I don't have sufficient expert experience in both virtualisation products (ESXI vs Hyper-V) and Storage solutions (San technologies such as NetApp, EMC etc..)

While having a good base understanding of technologies is very worth while, most of the positions I am now looking at have become all specialist roles

I guess it comes down to both the technology you love the most working with and what role you see yourself in

Andy

 

or vhorizon.co.uk perhaps!