We all have limited time on this Earth, and consequently, we all have limits to the skills we can develop. This is not to discourage us from learning in general, or to suggest that we can never be competent at or knowledgeable of a number of things, but it is to acknowledge that life requires certain trade-offs from us, depending on our goals, and it’s important to realize that not all of these work in our favor.
I’d like you to consider a few thoughts on job skills. When news articles say that the economy needs X number of jobs in such-and-such a field, what does that actually mean? Does it mean that the world will cease functioning if more people don’t fill those roles? Does it mean everyone will suffer so long as those vacancies persist? Or does it simply mean that the cost of employing individuals with those skills is currently too high, and Big Business needs more people to learn those skills in order to drive costs down?
I don’t believe in the benevolence of the economy. I’m not saying this to be negative, but I am saying this to be realistic. In school, these things were presented to us as “opportunities” and they weren’t lying – high demand skills often pay well, and skills that aren’t demanded at all pay nothing – but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that for nearly a decade people were clamoring to teach “coding” at younger and younger ages, just for the software industry to implode spectacularly when Big Tech decided to lay tens of thousands of software developers off. Now there’s a backlog of, say, Node developers who are too specialized to find jobs doing anything else, but who can’t otherwise find work (and don’t know anything outside of Node). Those who do find work often have to accept much lower pay. Being a “coder” was sold to the public as a gravy-train path to the middle class, but it’s now become one of the most over-saturated skills around, dependent as it always was on the flow of capital from big players in the industry.
This is, of course, the danger of over-specialization. I think I’ve lamented this numerous times before, but we’ve developed this almost fetishistic obsession with specialization. True geniuses like Ken Thompson checked all the boxes of fate for A) starting their specialization super young, B) being brilliant, and C) developing their skills into hyper-specialization. If you don’t know who Ken Thompson is, you might recognize the name Wayne Gretzky, who hyper-specialized in playing hockey. Very little attention is paid to those who check boxes A and B, but who wander around, searching for their calling, and never get around to C, or who later decide that the skill they developed at a young age (A) was not necessarily what mattered to them later in life. Some people check box B, but because they lack the time advantage that would be gifted to them by A, never attain C. Most of us don’t really have any of these, but we make do well enough; we just don’t tend to think of ourselves as special compared to The Greats.
First of all, I don’t ever want to look down on hyper-specialization. There’s nothing inherently wrong it, and some people really are handed the cards in life that are required for it, so more power to them. The problem is, it’s sold to us as the pinnacle achievement of life itself.
But who does hyper-specialization actually benefit? In software, there’s really no loyalty in these companies toward brilliant employees, and you could be kicked out just like everybody else. Moreover, with specialization, you become dependent on the demand for that specialization, and if it evaporates, no amount of brilliance in that skill set can save you.
This is where the argument for generalization comes in. Now to be clear up front, generalization is not inherently superior to specialization, but it does present some tradeoffs. First of all, generalization allows you take interest in a great variety of things, rather than boxing yourself into one thing. This is more consistent with life itself. Hunter gatherers are fantastically capable generalists, as are farmers. The potential downside is that there’s no glory from generalization (in the typical sense), and if you generalize too much, you might not find a job at all, since our economic system is predicated on the efficiency gains of specialization (a la Adam Smith’s famous pin factory example).
What I admire about generalization is that, aside from any value from the exchange of labor, it so frequently works in the individual’s favor, whereas specialization is more likely to only benefit employers.
Granted, specialists do seem to garner a lot of praise, which I have definitely been envious of at various times in my life (I’m not saying that’s a good thing, though). Being “hardcore” on a hobby is also highly praised, because it’s analogous to specialization. But sometimes you just want to go on a hike and enjoy something new, not rush a clock or treat the whole trip as one more check on a checklist.
I watch a decent number of urban exploring videos, and some of the more interesting ones explore large, defunct industrial sites. I find myself thinking about how many engineers it took to design, plan, and build such powerful factories, how intricate all the machinery is, and how involved the processes for maintaining the facilities. But the technology grows old and out of date (sometimes very quickly), maintenance of the site becomes too expensive, and eventually, everything is abandoned and turns to rust and decay. The knowledge of how to operate the facility fades as people retire and die off. I’m not trying to be depressing here, but it’s true. There’s an imperative to live life now, and that requires work, but the training of yesterday fades away, and there’s not a lot of that which you get to keep with you in any meaningful sense. When I scramble up odd valleys and find mining ruins, I wonder who the people were who spent time there. I wonder about their hopes and dreams, and whether they lived a good life, or were brought down to ruin. We are kindred, I and them, separated only by time, and my labor too will fade.
It just…it makes you ask the hard questions: what am I doing with my life? Does it work in my favor, or is it slavishly pursued because the propaganda told me I was a good boy for specializing? You really have to ask yourself these questions.
Several days ago, I stumbled across yet another cybersecurity training company that uses a leaderboard for ranking achievements. I understand that “gamification” can make things more fun, and I understand some people enjoy leaderboards, but it just feels manipulative. “Unless you are better than other people, you are worthless!” I remember a temp job I took long ago, doing menial paperwork, and they did something brilliant halfway through the project: they put up a whiteboard, and whenever we finished a box of papers, we would go up and add a tick below our name. Brilliant, and also disgusting. Nobody wanted to be the slacker with fewer ticks, and nobody would have minded maybe having the most ticks. We did more work. Classic psychological manipulation.
Seeing that leaderboard was actually the inspiration for this post because unceasing competition simply can’t be what humans were made for.
In the FIRE community, a popular blogger known as Dr. Doom came back from the grave of time to post a thorough and heartfelt explanation of his divorce, as his early retirement seems to have been a key factor in it. Although his post only presented things from his side, it was very reasonable and did not disparage his ex in any way. It seems his wife may have derived a certain prestige from his status as a highly-paid IT worker, and when this was violently taken away post-retirement, she couldn’t live without that prestige, as he was no longer “somebody” in their community. Absolutely not all women are like this, of course, but it is a very interesting angle that has stuck with me for 4 or 5 years since that post came out: some people are attracted to who you appear to be, rather than who you are. It’s almost better to have no prestige in the first place, lest you become bound by it (but this is a complicated subject, and not specifically the point of this post).
Sometimes, I think, this is precisely why we pursue specialization so doggedly, as there is almost a sort of cultural subconsciousness that believes the hyper-specialized are “superior” humans. I honest-to-God think this is some incredibly clever propaganda developed over the past 100 years. Doing good work was the hallmark of the era of guilds, but in the service economy, hyper-specialization is the new work currency. Oddly enough, the people at the top do not get there from hard work or specialization, but by having connections, money, and sometimes, the very generalist skills of running large organizations. But their key profits come from a minority of hyper-specialists, who get thrown a few bones in terms of “high” salaries, often capped around $200k (while the executives rake in millions or even billions). These become more replaceable the more hyper-specialists are out there, so the entire system is setup to encourage this. (not necessarily by design, but as a by-product of what elites incentivize)
From my own perspective, I don’t know. I really enjoy just about everything about cybersecurity, so I’m still open to what the future looks like. What I absolutely don’t want to do, though, is pigeonhole myself into niche skills that are only beneficial to employers. Doing security research on consumer goods to make sure they aren’t spying on you is still tremendously interesting to me, and although this wouldn’t necessarily garner me a lot of money (it could even cost me workplace options), it feels like a worthwhile pursuit, even if it may need to be a hobby at first.
I know a guy who once told me that he never pursues a certification unless it gives him a pay raise. He’s a good guy as far as I know, and this is not an inherently wrong perspective, but the attitude that earning money is the only purpose of skill just feels sad. It’s sad when people so thoroughly find no purpose in what they do that they sideline it to ‘strictly business’, and put absolutely no effort into it unless it pays them more. I guess if you do this so you can put that money to use in better ways, more power to you, but I’d rather invest in skills that can help me make the world a better place, or that can at least otherwise add capabilities to my own life. If you can’t arrange that, there’s no shame in simply working for money, but I like the attitude that maybe I can invest in skills that make my corner of the world a better place.