I fall into this group. I've so far found it to be a strength (mostly). R&D/prototype style work benefits highly from having generalists around. Most normal people just don't have a lot of breadth in terms of knowing what else is out there or what's been done outside of a narrowly defined field.

95% of the time you'll be greeted with a "huh...interesting" and no follow up, but in my experience that remaining 5% can be pretty awesome when you stumble upon something that solves a problem in a way nobody else imagined.

"R&D/prototype style work"

That sounds great, but it also sounds rare and potentially low paid.

I work embedded so pretty much everything falls into R&D in the field. Like obviously stay away from maintenance projects but most new development is a science project in my experience.

I work in a similar role and it was a pita to get and involved luck. They're definitely rare, but not low paid

I think it works best if you have a core field. The cross discipline knowledge would prevent group think and result in more original ideas.

Yeah, and in my experience management only wants people who think the same way they do.

It definitely can be a weakness and some of us are just wired this way.

When it comes to the job market I think it's important, for those of us who are generalists, to NOT attempt to compete in fields where there are massive numbers of candidates all aiming for the same kinds of jobs. In any "hot career track" one would be competing against others who are much more narrowly focused. There's always going to be someone who is more capable and has gained more achievement in any particular activity "silo".

Ironically, generalists do much better in niche jobs where they can apply peculiar combinations of skills. The hard part is these jobs are hard to find, and worse, the situation can be miserable for generalists early in their career.

It's a weakness unless you succeed in synthesizing ideas and intuitions very fast into something unique and high quality.

Extra knowledge can't possibly be a weakness.

If you frame it as just "extra knowledge" then, sure, it's not a weakness. The problem is when extra knowledge is acquired at the expense of deeper focus (knowledge) in another area.

>> The problem is when extra knowledge is acquired at the expense of deeper focus (knowledge) in another area.

How it this a problem? It is just another way.

Just as an example, if you look at tech job postings you'll see that they almost all want someone who is an expert - mostly senior level, have a core tech listed in the title (eg Senior React Engineer at Company X). I rarely see any truly general roles posted. People want "T" or Pi shaped devs, nobody wants a "-" shaped dev.

As a dev with 10 years experience and a masters who has not been allowed to specialize due to language/stack/project/product context switching, I can anecdotally say that generalists are not valued and that this breadth of learning generally prevents specialization. I am only a midlevel and make under $100k in a moderate-high COL area.

Being a generalist is beneficial in freelancing, since it gives you demonstrated skill in lots of areas. The more areas, the more projects you "qualify" for, since clients want assurance that you can jump right in and be productive. (Also, "getting up to speed quickly in a new language/codebase/whatever" is a useful skill in freelancing, since that is a clear need)

I think people hiring employees frequently don't realize that they need generalists and instead act like they are hiring permanent contractors.

You've made the strongest case I've seen for some knowledge flexibility by bringing up tech freelancing, but this generalization is still ensconced in tech specialism. The last two posts have lost sight of the bigger picture.

The conversation began with the OP talking about wide cross-disciplinary pursuits.

"A couple of years back I started dabbling in the social sciences and humanities (my background is in ecology / evolutionary biology), and became interested in one discipline after another. From psychology to history of science to anthropology and sociology, to economics and politics, to philosophy and religious studies and cultural studies, etc."

My post was a reply to a response to "Refuse to Choose" and the concept of a "Scanner", someone who is looking at many different disciplines that do not all immediately relate to one another.

And my original post was to the effect of "Yes, being a scanner is a weakness if you can't synthesize your cross disciplinary knowledge into extremely valuable non-obvious insights and/or awe-inspiring products".

Basically, think of ideas as being distanced apart from each other. Some of them are in your head, others in mine, some are in a book, or a movie. If we are specialists working together on a project, then to access and synthesize ideas that exist in both our heads we need to have a meeting, which takes significant time. To access it from media, we're going to need to consume media and study, which takes even more time. A helpful analogy would be the memory hierarchy if you know a bit about computer architecture.

But, if many different ideas exist already, only in one person's head, no meetings are needed. They can just work, synthesizing as they go. That is where the "Scanner" emerges from their cocoon and inverts what has been up to then a weakness sapping the ability to excel in one field, instead becoming what one might call "A Renaissance Man".