| Over time, it's hard not to become a highly experienced generalist if you're good at what you do. When a developer starts out its easy to find and beat a tribal drum of specializing in a few things. This is often due to only having one or two cycles of learning and experiencing "a few years specializing in x". Add to the mix the veiled glorification of the twenties as a magical time to go hard (where ultimately everyone goes home), it can become an incredibly distracting echo chamber that one has arrived. Something happens every few years though on the path of being a specialist, you get deep enough into one skill that it overlaps into another skill. The specific few skills collected in the first few years, become a specific 5-10 with equal depth. Take someone who has developed 15 to 40 years and imagine how many cycles of learning they have been through to implement similar algorithms in multiple syntaxes. That's someone I want to learn from when I shape my aporoaches, instead of having to feed my own snowflake quotient to relearn the same lessons before me. As a polyglot, I've been programing for 20 years and am only in my mid-30's. Most developers will end up the same. way I've ended up with enough web, desktop and mobile development, along with the hardware and networking experience that building these solutions once required in addition to programming alone. It's full stack across hardware and software and networking, not the full-stack of frontend and backend dev that specialists espouse as full stack. I sure as hell didn't plan on this path, maybe it's the path of a lifelong problem solver. One thing that some twenty something specialists may not yet have noticed is that programming is a separate skill from the syntax of any given language. The experience of figuring out how to do what you already know in a new syntax. It seems there can be more fascination in recreating libraries that have existed for decades, but not what the next leap is. There's a fundamental mistake most recruiters are making too. They aren't qualified or trained to hire for technical positions. In the hiring I do and references I give, recruiters are generally clueless without their checklist. Programming isn't a skill like knowing how to drive a forklift. It's much deeper, and with the correct type of polyglot developer much more transferable between languages. I'm inclined to work with an experienced generalist more often than not because I prefer to work with others who not only keep up, but help lead the strategic charge. Depending on the problem, younger specialists often go through relearning what experience has already taught. Both skillsets are valuable and necessary on any team, but I have my preference. My advice, is to consider focus on a highly fluid and evolving area of technology that is in high demand, pays well, and you can effortlessly pick up. It's where you're talents shine. One area is mobile development. Build some projects and spin current skills into the next area. It will better highlight your ability to integrate everything from top to bottom. I admire and am in respect of your experience and journey through creating so many solutions. If there's an interest to connect offline I'd love to learn more about your story to see if I may be able to help and if I may be able to learn more from your experience. Will anyone who is half good at what they do will end up in any different situation than this in 20 years? Our creators need to keep creating. Maybe there is an evolution and growth needed in our field for the highly experienced. |