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Comment by notsurenymore | Hacker News Reader

I’m still trying to figure out how one becomes a “generalized specialist”. I would seem that once you establish yourself as a generalist, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve specialization.

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Think of it this way: good at everything, great at this one thing. It takes time and dedication, generally outside work hours.

My experience is no one gives a shit if it happens outside of work hours. Maybe if you can establish yourself to pseudo-celebrity status within the particular niche?

No no, hone your skills outside of work, but use them at work.

But there’s still the problem. If you established you career doing X and you’re preferred niche is Y, you aren’t going to get to use Y at work because it’s simply irrelevant to you’re career doing X.

Let’s say in a run of the mill enterprise web developer, but I have an interest in a particular niche, say low level network programming or game development. I can hone my skills in the latter all I want, but I’ll never get the chance use them at my day job and I’ll never get a job working in that nice because they’re only interested in already established professional experts.

I'll put it another way. Leadership skills and communication skills are mostly a generalized skillset, but they're pretty important in any job, however specialized it is. Financial management is a skill that's kind of generic and commodities, but still important and definitely buildable if you want to start a company.

I think a better formula would be economic rather than philosophical: find a job that pays a lot of money whether you like it or not, then establish your career in something you're passionate about regardless of how lucrative it is

It's a fun style of advice-giving

> then establish your career in something you're passionate about regardless of how lucrative it is

Yeah this is the part I’m stuck at. You can’t just “establish your career in something you’re passionate about”, lucrative or not.

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