Generalist or specialist?

When I look back at my early days out of college, I never really planned to settle into one company or one narrow field. I already knew what pulled me: logic, algorithms, the backend, how things actually work underneath.

Everyone leans somewhere. Some friends loved the UI side, playing with colors and typography. Others loved building mobile apps. And the common advice was always the same: pick one thing and go deep, that becomes your specialty for the future.

But I found out that being a specialist is genuinely hard. There is a real yardstick. At a certain age you are expected to be able to do certain things, certifications mark certain levels of knowledge, and that is often what earns someone the label expert or specialist. The standard is real, and it is demanding.

So after a year or two of working, I pivoted. I chose to become a generalist. I deliberately learned across domains so I could hold my own in several areas. In my case, being in IT, that meant backend, frontend, DevOps, a bit of mobile, plus the business logic and analysis around it.

The risk is honest. I am probably not as deep as someone who spent all their time on a single domain. Time is limited, and every hour spread wide is an hour not spent going deeper.

But the upside surprised me. Moving across domains gave me a lot of new perspectives. It sharpened my critical sense, because I could look at a problem from several assumptions at once instead of just one. I could see how the pieces connect, something a specialist sometimes misses.

There is no answer that is right for everyone. It depends on who you are and what you want. But for me, choosing to be a generalist is one of the best decisions I have made. It fits how my mind works, and it has kept the work interesting all these years.