Comments on: IT Generalists and Specialists

By: Caio Fernandes Yonezawa

Caio Fernandes Yonezawa — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 18:22:52 +0000

Excellent post Alan!
I’m in my first IT job. I work in a manufacturing industry and it’s structure is really weird.
It is a medium to big enterprise, but the feeling that I have is that it’s administrative core looks like SMB.
As I said, I started just a year ago here, but I feel that it has expanded it’s production and sales very fast, but the “business mind” did not changed.

At this point we have about 250 to 300 employees, where there are about 150 production, 100 sales and only 50 administrative roles. On IT we are on 3.

I did notice that we had no organization… no ticket system, no urgency treatment, no specialized knowledge; we had nothing…

My first concern was to organize everything up. I improved somethings, but there are still many limitations and person problems…

Your article helped me to understand better what is happening to this enterprise and with my career.

By: Scott Alan Miller

Scott Alan Miller — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:36:56 +0000

The average generalist is going to make far less than the average specialist. Primarily this is because of one being in smaller companies and the other in larger and, by extension of this, one having the “network and proximity professional effect” available to them and the other not.

But at the highest ranks, specialists, even in large firms, give way to generalists. So the very highest paid positions are mostly generalists, but those positions are also the most uncommon.

By: Siphos

Siphos — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 08:30:35 +0000

But which title is worth more in terms of salary, the specialist or the generalist?

By: Great article on IT Generalist vs. Specialist

Great article on IT Generalist vs. Specialist — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:39:01 +0000

[…] IT Generalists and Specialists | SMB IT Journal This was a really interesting read and the author makes some great points. This topic comes up a good bit here so I'd recommend anyone whose pondered the topic to give it a whirl. Both career paths offer rewarding and broad options but the choice between them does play a rather significant role in deciding the flavor of a career. Generalists, beyond gravitating towards smaller businesses, will also likely picking up a specialization in an industry over time as they move into higher salary ranges (manufacturing, medical, professional services support, legal, etc.) Specialists will find their focus is in their technology and their focus on market will be less. Generalist will find it easier to find work in any given local market, specialists will find that they often need to move to major markets and potentially only the core markets will provide great growth opportunities but within those markets mobility and career flexibility will be very good. Generalists have to work hard to keep up with a broad array of technologies and changes in the market. Specialists will often have deep vendor resources available to them and will find the bulk of their educational options come directly from the vendors in their focus area. Quote […]