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Mitch Betts

Think Tank

IT generalist or specialist? Thrasher votes for specialist

3 comments

IT TOPICS:Careers

We're taught in school to be well-rounded. HR wants us to have a wide variety of skills. But IT management consultant Harwell Thrasher says that, in the business world, being a generalist is the ticket to mediocrity. "You’re much more likely to achieve career success if you get really good in one area than if you achieve moderate mastery in a number of different areas," he says in the latest edition of his newsletter. This could be considered either common sense -- if you agree -- or contrarian, given the spate of articles about the need for a broad mix of business and IT and soft skills.

If it's not already clear what you want to specialize in, Thrasher provides a step-by-step guide to help you figure that out.

Some examples of what he means by specialization:

Building data centers, consolidating them, or optimizing their performance
Designing human-engineered information systems for mobile service workers
Planning and managing software development projects that implement a technology for the first time
Finding and fixing software or system problems that other people have been unable to solve
Designing e-commerce web sites for teenagers
Putting together a highly-motivated team of competent software developers
Understanding the needs of a particular kind of business and determining the best way to utilize IT talent to contribute to the business

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I've been in both the

Submitted by DaveA on July 17, 2007 - 4:17 P.M.

I've been in both the consulting arena and the employment arena for 30+ years; all the work has been with Fortune 500 companies, mostly in the financial industries.

Bottom line: Be a generalist, with a hard-core specialty. Think about your physician: You are probably happy with him/her because he/she knows lots about lots of different things regarding health and medicine, and when it comes down to it, is the best one you know in their area of specialization.

That has to be us in IT. I am a specialized generalist, which is why I have root privileges on all our corporate systems, even though my primary responsibility is middleware administration. My company highly values my systems programming and systems administration background and experience (370 mainframes, PDP/VAX minis, Motorola/Intel/IBM micros,), my programming background (C, C++, 370 Assembler, VAX Assembler, Intel x86 assembler, etc.), my knowledge of data structures and programming methodology, and oh yes, I even understand the business and how it works.

Can't beat what I get hear - good salary, broad responsibility, trust - comes from being a generalist with a specialty.

Next, I'm working on my written and grammar skills!

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I guess it depends on

Submitted by Dave on July 10, 2007 - 4:32 P.M.

I guess it depends on whether you want to work for a steady employer or whether you want to be in consulting. Personally, I can't think of anything that would drive me insane faster than having to do exactly the same sort of work every day of my life.

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I agree with this blog.

Submitted by Anonymous on July 10, 2007 - 11:47 A.M.

I agree with this blog. I've always thrived as an independent consultant by being a generalist. Partly to stay employed. :-) However, I've recently started to work for a big 4 accounting firm, where I thought that being a generalist in the audit sense would continue to be a positive. However, I've found it increasingly difficult to be staffed on engagements because when it comes to the consulting engagements, the partners and senior managers look for specialists because it's the only way to justify the high rates that we charge as a big 4. So, I've had to revise my approach to my career because that's the only way I'm going to survive. I think you still need to be well rounded, but you better have a specialty of your own!!

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