Being good at more than 1 thing is more valuable than being excellent in 1 only

http://karankurani.com/post/177084191438/being-average-in-1-things-is-easier-and-more

by BIackSwan • 8 years ago

16 9 8 years ago

leetbulb3• 8 years ago

I find this difficult.

I'd consider myself an expert with PHP (and various frameworks), JavaScript (NodeJS and React), SysAdmin, and MySQL, but also "good" with C++ (modern), CI/CD / DevOps, AWS, K8S, and other random technologies like MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Druid, Redis, etc...but find it extremely difficult to find career opportunities. Mostly because I feel that having such a broad resume could lead to the assumption that I would demand more compensation than an average employee, which is something that has actually been confirmed by a hiring manager.

ChristianGeek• 8 years ago

Any job candidate who claims to be an expert in more than one or two things throws up red flags for me immediately. (And I’d still challenge their knowledge of those one or two things.)

karmakaze• 8 years ago

Ok let's do the math. How many years of real world experience does it take to be an expert? We'll go with 10 and say you can pick up two of areas at once, e.g. a database and programming language. Now if someone has a 15 year career they could have 3 areas of expertise if they worked in a few differing environments. Very doable.

MrLeap• 8 years ago

What's extremely difficult to you? My resume is _broad_, a touch of ADHD has had me doing everything from printer drivers, to data science to videogames for the U.S. Army.

Admittedly, first instinct was to scoff at the difficult-to-get-jobs comment, but then I remembered a time I was jobless and looking. I applied for 105 different positions, I only got 4 callbacks and 2 interviews. Neither interview led to an offer.

I was literally down to my last 100$, ready to start selling things to pay the rent and someone called me with a job who found my linkedin profile at random. I hadn't even applied to them!

That experience re-validated some heuristics I have for applying to jobs. I ignored them in that instance because I thought I was "being too picky". I used to think I was a superstar at getting jobs, remaining interested in them, not as much. Fortunately these days both lines have moved a bit towards the center.

The following year when I was looking for contracts I re-implemented most of my original rules, and my offer rate jumped from 0:2:4:105 to 5:6:9:10. I don't think they're laws for everyone, but they've worked for me.

1) Avoid recruiters. Make sure your resume hits the desk of someone who works for the target company with no brokers in between. Look up companies in your industry, in your area, with your interest level. Ask your friends if they know anyone who works there, have a casual coffee with your inside contact. Say you're just networking. Ask them what they do, be genuinely interested. Answer their questions about what you do. Express interest in working at said company. Follow their directions -- ESPECIALLY if it doesn't include the sentence "apply on their website".

2) Your resume is simultaneously more and less important than you think. If you network it's nearly irrelevant. I once got a job with a resume that was totally nonsense. I uploaded a PDF and when the hiring manager got it, it was displayed to him as binary -> ascii. I was using weird kerning settings that made it so about every 7th, 11th and 15th letter was missing. This intrigued the stakeholder enough that they called me to see if I was a lunatic.

I was not, that job was fun.

If you have any specific difficulties I may have a folksy anecdote showing how I defeated the very same thing. I'm getting old.

leetbulb3• 8 years ago

Thank you for the advice :) The PDF bit is hilarious.

waterbear• 8 years ago

More to the point, it’s proof of mental alacrity to find new challenges worth meeting.

To seek out cool things, even if they represent difficult accomplishments, and maintain enough drive to reach the finish line.

Imitating one successful chess strategy, and using it on only those who are unfamiliar with how to defend against it, is very different from being generally good at chess, and a handful of other complicated games as well.

fitba1969• 8 years ago

How about being excellent at one thing and knowing a wee bit about a bunch of other things

Being good at more than 1 thing is more valuable than being excellent in 1 only

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