[brd]

Speaking from an enterprise perspective I'd say the reason most companies do not hire generalists is because the corporate structure is not well equipped to handle such resources. Very few companies grok the concept of internal consultants (which is exactly how a generalist will have to function in order to be leveraged properly) and fewer still know how to foster that sort of talent.

On top of this, a company by its very nature will tend to pigeonhole employees. It is costly to do knowledge transfer, its costly to move employees around, its costly to train employees, and in reality it is inefficient to not leverage prior experience as much as possible.

Even though we are in the "information era" companies still very much function as if we were standing on an assembly lines.