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A comment on Business Lessons I Learned This Year.

Re:Business Lessons I Learned This Year by hansef on Monday August 31, 2009 @06:43PM (#796877)
Although I agree that the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none personality type doesn't make a good hire, the corollary to this is that you need to watch out for people with advanced not-my-job-syndrome. Over the years I've worked with designers who consider any mention of production of their work "techie speak", developers who think design is just "making things pretty", Flash guys who get the creepy-crawlies if they have to interface with Javascript, marketing drones who completely lack any understanding of how a web application is built, etc. Claiming to be a "specialist" is often just cover for a lack of intellectual curiosity.

People should of course always excel at a few specific things, and play off each others' strengths, but remember: specialization is for insects.

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Re:Business Lessons I Learned This Year by anamax on Monday August 31, 2009 @07:47PM (#796958)
> Although I agree that the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none personality type doesn't make a good hire

I'm not sure that I do. I've seen companies that survived because someone did what it took to ship, regardless of whether "it" had anything to do with his/her speciality.

Or, maybe that person's "speciality" was "ships product".

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Re:Business Lessons I Learned This Year by hansef on Monday August 31, 2009 @07:58PM (#796976)
+1

As a self-professed generalist I just didn't want to sound too self-serving. ;) OTOH, I believe that striving to develop particular excellence in a few things IS a hallmark of good self-discipline...

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Re:Business Lessons I Learned This Year by smhinsey on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @12:23AM (#797370)
I've always found the continuation of that cliche to be interesting. In full it reads "jack of all trade, master of none, but ofttimes better than the master of one."
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Re:Business Lessons I Learned This Year by rmaccloy on Monday August 31, 2009 @08:43PM (#797029)
I completely disagree (with the article) when it comes to startup staffing. There are a few cases where having a domain expert is necessary (e.g. if you're writing, say, a new database system or doing realtime software, or if you're selling into a specific market where connections are necessary) but for most startups you're way better off having someone who's a decent programmer but also a competent sysadmin, pretty good with customers, or decent contract negotiator. An early stage startup probably won't even know what to specialize _in_.

Better yet is having someone who's a fast learner and can pick any/all of the above up as needed.

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