Today’s topic is an interesting one, and depends largely on personal preference. It’s something that comes up for engineers every day: Be decent at many things, or be the absolute end-all-be-all expert in one thing? Some might respond with, “Well, how about being an expert at everything?”
Aside: It sounds funny, but this should probably be the goal for every engineer. I got great advice from my first manager: create a skill matrix. It was essentially an organized goal table consisting of career goals, skills, techniques, subject matter to learn, etc. that I wanted to accomplish. Being an expert in all of them is optimal, but time and job constraints often prove this difficult.
When it comes to the question at hand, many times engineers do not have much choice. Management will often make that choice for the engineer when they prioritize staff time and resources. But, let’s assume that there is a degree of freedom and the engineer can choose which-tech skills and/or design techniques on which he can focus. What should be in the engineer’s best interest for career advancement and job security? There are advantages and disadvantages to a broader skill set vs. a more focused one.
Jack of all Trades
The advantages to being good across many job functions are tied to versatility. Frankly, the company can use you more ways, and this can be very advantageous during times of change at the workplace. There are more subtle advantages, too. With a more broad skill set, the engineer tends to communicate across multiple design groups. The engineer also proves to be more resourceful, finding answers on his own without the help of others. These skills translate VERY well to management. In fact, one could claim that technical managers are the kings of being good at many things (and hopefully experts in a few). Another advantage to working across groups are the personal connections. Knowing more people in the industry, and working on design successes together, always bodes well for future job prospects.
Domain Expert
The advantages to being an expert at one job function are tied to indispensability. Engineers in this mode often can not be replaced within the company. This can also be a valuable position to be in during company changes. If no one else has the technical expertise to handle a specific design, the expert skills are invaluable to job security. Often, these engineers have an increased sense of ownership or pride over designs, as their contributions are clearly vital to the success of the company. The increased focus and concentration that the engineer can apply to one section of the design is preferred by some as well. By not switching topics, starting new design flows with other groups, or reviewing others’ work, the engineer can really hone his skills to an expert level. Just as being versatile helps with connections, specific expertise can be an immediate job creator when other companies look for this targeted skill set.
Obviously, engineers would like to be experts across the board. Throughout our careers, I do think we should strive for this. But, with stringent time constraints placed by our corporate bosses to push-to-market and make profit, it often proves difficult to either a) branch out and learn something new, or b) focus as intently on possible on one function and become the expert.
In your experience, which is better: Expert in one thing, or good at many things? Why?
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Thanks for the post.
Engineers ARE experts in everything. The definition of an engineer might as well be “one who knows everything better then anyone else.”
Keep on writing!
Masha
I recommend Jack of All Trades. In the course of working on different projects, you can’t help but gain some depth of expertise in various areas. The more areas, the better. When change comes, either you have applicable expertise in some area that the company needs, or worst case, you are known as someone that is adaptable and can take on a job that requires learning new skills.
Becoming a Domain Expert, you are indispensable only as long as your one area of focus is needed. For a few very lucky individuals, that can be a life long career. But for many that try that path, there are many roads to unemployment. Eventually (very often lately) a company reorganization may eliminate the need for your one area of expertise. Or the company realizes they need fewer experts in that area. Or as technology evolves, you fail to choose the right next-generation technology to follow and thus become obsolete. Or you might simply allow yourself to stagnate and keep up with change.
Mark McGuiness has a fantastic post about this dichotomy from a slightly different point of view (more related to the fields typically considered creative) which also builds on posts by Steve Hardy and David Armano. His conclusion is highly relevant. We’re always both, to some degree or another.
I believe that if you keep enough knowledge of what’s going on in general, then your depth of expertise becomes more valuable. If you have a specialization to go along with a general point of view then you can apply that depth of knowledge to other problems more effectively. It’s difficult to build innovative intersections if you only know the generalist portion of everything.
Having something as a specialty also allows you to lead a conversation with something easy to understand and begin to discuss or a particular way of looking at a problem if you have a new assignment. Then you can branch out from there.
Darn it, I forgot to leave the link to the post – http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/2008/03/11/is-it-better-to-be-a-creative-generalist-or-a-specialist/
I am both an expert and a jack of all (many) trades and I think it’s good to be that way. My skills matrix is long and varied but with varying levels of expertise ranging from novice to guru.
I think the key is to be expert in the generic skills such as research, design, programming and problem solving, and the ability to learn a new trade with relative ease. Knowing how to find things out I have found to be an invaluable skill that many people lack (thankfully, as this keeps me in a job).