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by PaulRobinson 2953 days ago
T-shaped is excellent advice but there is something to be said for “paint drip shaped” skills too: imagine a thick line of white paint on a wall and how it drips down unevenly. Some of the drips/skills are very long, some are short, and most of the paint is that wide beam.

In relation to the OP then, being a master of an area is valuable, but so is knowledge of a few others in some depth and a lot of other areas at a much shallower depth.

1 comments

I'd been hunting for this 'paint drip skills' for a while now. I finally found it again. It's from Kent Beck [0] (plus HN thread [1]) where as I kept on assuming it was from Paul Graham.

[0]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip-people/1...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12226242