I really dislike the dichotomy of specialist vs generalist — it doesn't seem particularly useful for career planning. It's much simpler to go "what's REALLY in demand in the market, and can I go do that?"
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What specifically don’t you like about it? I find it hard to argue with the fact that people differ on skill distributions. Some wider others deeper
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I need a whole thread to explain, sadly. (And I'm still working out the best way to articulate it).
A small section:
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Finally published the 2nd chapter of my Career Moats Guide (members only): commoncog.com/blog/start-fro
Deleted 1000 words, but I'm finally happy with the results.
Core thesis: when career planning, don't just work forwards from skills and interests. Also work backwards from demand.
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At the risk of being too succinct:
Career moats exist where employers say "I need to hire someone to solve <really painful problem X>."
e.g. "I need to hire a CEO so I can divest this subsidiary", or "I need someone to scale the sales team for my startup's shitty product".
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Employers don't sit around asking "Should I hire a generalist? Or a specialist?" Therefore this isn't an effective approach to find a career moat.
Better approach: "Is <really painful problem X> currently seen as valuable? Who hires for it? Would it stay rare? Can I learn it?"
Of course, all sorts of nuance that's hard to get into on Twitter. Like sometimes, in some fields, you have two skills that don't normally co-occur in one person, and so the hiring is optimised to hire two different types of people. So maybe you can argue generalist vs specialist
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But even then, I think it's more useful to ask ‘demand-sided’ questions than ‘should I be generalist vs specialist?’ when you're doing career planning.
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