Reply to: Are you a specialist?

[realityhack]

Bit of a mix - I have some very niche skills that I capitalise on whenever possible - as well as a general knowledge that allows me to adapt in challenging market situations.

You can visualise skills/knowledge as deep or broad - some highly specialised people I know have little breadth but more depth than anyone - so find work for £££££££££ but really struggle when the market is poor.

Those with little depth but a wide breadth usually don't get the top rates unless their political intelligence is high - and risk being rubbish management/strategy types unless they have some depth, or a lot of luck.

There's probably only ~20 people who have the equivalent depth of knowledge as me in niche areas, in this country, but I have a working end-to-end knowledge of the design lifecycle, and have played some part in each stage personally, so at least I can appreciate the input required into the other teams' areas, and how it should look as an operating model.

So, I'm a specialist when all's well, and can fall back to another discipline (e.g. visual design) if the market bombs.

[alreadypacked]

I've rather a niche skill, but I get a higher rate, not because the skill is incredibly rare, but because I'm value for money, and recognised as such. I get things done far more quickly, and what I develop general works, is robust and easy to enhance.

WHS

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Talk about lack of options. I guess I am AndyW.

[NotAllThere]

I've rather a niche skill, but I get a higher rate, not because the skill is incredibly rare, but because I'm value for money, and recognised as such. I get things done far more quickly, and what I develop general works, is robust and easy to enhance.

[sasguru]

Apart from my rare and technical specialised skills and strategic nous, I'm a master of corporate politics and hence completely un-bobable.

[BlasterBates]

Steer clear of product specialism. I can see SAP aint too bad, but on the whole you end up in an ever declining niche.

I used to be a product specialist, though that was permie, I wouldn't do it again, you end up identifying too closely with it, and then when they screw up you get screwed as well.

Best to have a general skill like Java or C++ and then perhaps specialise in a domain, like finance or telecomms.

[Churchill]

I just get the job done.

Sometimes I

Others I'm a

Occasionally I have to

It helps pay the bills

[Freamon]

Yeah.

What I was thinking of, I suppose, was people who are a specialist in software Product X, where Product X is a tool that is not universally used amongst people who are trying to solve the problems that Product X can sold.

Let's say you have a marketplace with 5 competing software products. 90% of the market uses products 1-4 because they're cheaper and the skills are interchangeable between them, so there's plenty of people around who can use them. The remaining 10% use Product X because it's actually better than the other products, but to get it to work you need to really be a specialist in that product.

Is anyone here a specialist in such a thing? Is becoming a specialist in it a good idea?

[NickFitz]

Interesting question, but predicated on certain assumptions that make it somewhat meaningless.

"Are you a specialist?"

In the sense that I don't claim to be able to do everything, yes. On the other hand, I work in a field (web development) that requires one to have specialised knowledge in a number of areas if one is to be of the best, which means one can be seen as something of a generalist. Apart from technical expertise in such things as using HTML to express the semantics of information, using CSS to satisfy the requirements of the graphic designers who specify the representation of that information, and using HTTP, progressively enhanced with JavaScript, to implement the requirements of the interaction designers who specify the ways in which the user should be able to interact with that information, one also has to be competent at the business of specifying and implementing the server-side code that satisfies the requirements defined by the URL schema that has been specified, possibly by an information architect, possibly by nobody until one happens along, to provide access to the information in the first place.

In reality, most projects seem to be prioritised to accord with so-called "requirements" produced in Photoshop by graphic designers who have no understanding of the semantics of the information that is to be presented, are incapable of creating a design sufficiently flexible to accommodate interaction, have never thought about what stuff should look like when interaction occurs beyond specifying a different colour for links when the user moves the mouse over them, and haven't the faintest idea what a database is, never mind why it may be totally impossible to retrieve ten thousand arbitrary records from fifty different unindexed tables for each individual user at a rate of a thousand users per second from a virtual server running on shared hosting for £10 per annum

So, I have to conclude that I'm not a specialist in the sense of just doing one thing. I am, rather, so much of a generalist that I end up being a specialist because not many people can manage to deal with such a disparity of tulip and make it all work in the end.

The problem lies not so much in getting good money for doing all that tulip, as in finding clients that realise that they need to pay good money for somebody who can pull all that tulip together, because each individual bit of tulip can be done in isolation by loads of otherwise-useless ****ers.

[stek]

I used to be an infrastructure specialist, but these days I'm a PM and I manage far more than just IT projects. I've just been asked to look at an industrial manufacturing optimisation problem and do a lot of commercial stuff so I'm a generalist PM

I'm also a qualified accountant so I feel I have the core skills for accounting systems, SAP etc, but I missed that particular boat.

I think some sort of architect would be my next logical step - but I can't make that step in contracting unless lucky/niche enough, though oddly enough i look after a shed load of AIX DB2/SAP VM's - my accounting knowledge has helped sort things, though the SAP door remains firmly shut.

I think another poster in another thread hit the nail on the head, we are all Bob-able, all the DB2/SAP guys I deal with are in Calcutta or is it Kolkata or summert now? Anyway, that post i referred to made me think - no Bob can replace anyone here customer facing (well some can - many of my Bob mates are totally fluent in English).

And i like customer facing, I like to talk and enthuse people, trouble is I hate wearing a suit and I'm naturally scruffy - think Bob Geldoff...

[TykeMerc]

I used to be an infrastructure specialist, but these days I'm a PM and I manage far more than just IT projects. I've just been asked to look at an industrial manufacturing optimisation problem and do a lot of commercial stuff so I'm a generalist PM

[Cliphead]

Specialisation is for insects.

HTH

[stek]

What about those who do real work, i.e. not PMs and BAs?

I do virtualisation, Solaris and AIX at hardware level, not pussy Vmware ESX software hypervisor type stuff. I'd expect having the two would bag me loads of roles, but it doesn't - I get the impression that agents/clients think I just know half of each.

That's real work - though I seldom see the actual kit now - it's 200/2000 miles away. Still, a lot of design and a lot implementation, I love what I do and I don't ever want to lose the hands-on part of my job/role, and have to start badgering people like 'have you done the LPAR move on Frame 4" bollocks. I just say 'yeah, just doing it now, master'.

Put the kettle on, Baldrick.....

[amcdonald]

Some skills I have are specialist but when the markets tulip I'm more concerned with staying in a contract continuously

This recession I've not been on the bench longer than 9 days so far despite only relatively short contracts

I could have hung on hoping to get a better contract, but at the moment bench time is more of a concern

[d000hg]

• Yes, there's only a few dozen people in the country that have my particular skills/knowledge.
• My skills are niche but there's quite a few people with them
• No, I am a generic IT PM/Business Analyst

What about those who do real work, i.e. not PMs and BAs?