Hacker News Reader

Comment by spiderfarmer | Hacker News Reader

I’m a generalist and it works for me in my one man company. In my previous company I hired specialists, not generalists, because the specialists did not suffer from distractions as much as generalists did. They also didn’t question everything a specialist in another area did. It’s also easier to build teams that way.

View on HN

True, but is your level of success similar to the level of success of someone who is the best in the world at something?

That's a good point.

However, I think the question is how likely it is that you would be able to become the best in the world at something?

I think that people who are the best in the world at something tend to be genetic freaks. Are you one? Probably not.

In that case, attempting to become the best in the world might mean setting yourself up for failure, though presumably you would still be more successful than an average person. It's just that there's a massive difference between being in the top 10% and the top 1% in terms of reward.

I guess people being at the 99 percentile of one specialized thing probably are better compensated (with respect to salary) than people being at 99 percentile of their array of skills. However, maybe for the latter, also compensation is an array consisting of work-life-balance elements like sports, free-time, hobbies, happiness on the job and family life aside from pure monetary compensation.

I think that's definitely something to consider. In theory, everyone would love to be the best in the world at something, but in practice, how many people would want to live a life required to achieve that?

Probably not, but the author thinks that as a generalist your changes of succes are higher, not the level of success.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com