Damn it, they gave it a name. Now we can expect a lot of pop-psychology/business media bullshit about this concept for the coming decade.
But yeah, this article generally captures my thoughts about the "T-shaped employee" thing, except that I personally want to be "bicycle-wheel shaped" human. First, a human, because my employment does not define me, and by "bicycle-wheel", for lack of better term, I mean many specializations in different areas that end up connecting with each other.
As for the feasability of the "T-shaped" vs "paint drip", I think the latter is better - sure, ceteris paribus, you won't be able to put as much energy into many things as you can put in one, but I believe there are diminishing returns in specializations - and since the job market, like most markets, is terribly inefficient, you can probably get away with multiple specializations up until robots replace us all.
> by "bicycle-wheel", for lack of better term, I mean many specializations in different areas that end up connecting with each other.
This is the part that really resonates with me.
I'm one of those people that naturally has way too many interests and hobbies than there are hours in the day. What I find time and again is that as I go far enough into some new interest, it starts to converge and connect to my other ones. I see similarities, or ideas where I can combine multiple interests to produce something that I couldn't make with just one of them.
These days, I don't even really see separation between them. I'm just a big amorphous blob of all of this stuff, jumbled together. The jumbling together is way more important than any constituent part.
> What I find time and again is that as I go far enough into some new interest, it starts to converge and connect to my other ones. I see similarities, or ideas where I can combine multiple interests to produce something that I couldn't make with just one of them.
I've experienced the same thing. I used to joke that if you go far enough in any discipline, you'll end up in philosophy and abstract math. But it's more than that. Reality does not recognize specializations and boundaries. Reality is that "amorphous blob of all of this stuff, jumbled together". Drawing boundaries help us make sense of the world, but it's important to recognize boundaries are somewhat arbitrary and we're free to redraw them to fit our needs better.
"Clicking on the first lowercase link in the main text of a Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually eventually gets one to the Philosophy article. As of May 26, 2011, 94.52% of all articles in Wikipedia lead eventually to the article Philosophy."
Neat. Using the x86 Wikipedia article as a starting point, and clicking the first lower case link repeatedly, it took me 45 clicks to get to the Philosophy.
I feel like I am one of these people too. However, sometimes it seems really stressful (for me at least). I feel the pull of too many directions. Given such varied interests, how do you stay productive and get things done?
Sometimes I feel like my life would be much easier if I could just focus on one or a small few things :-)
> However, sometimes it seems really stressful (for me at least).
Yeah, it stresses me out too. Especially now that I have kids and my time is really limited, it's frustrating not being able to follow my interests as much as I like.
I try to do two things:
1. Deliberately triage my time. I intentionally choose what I'm not going to spend time on. It's really easy to ask myself, "Should I spend time on ___?" The answer is always "yes!" So, instead, I force myself to answer, "What am I not going to spend time on?" The only way one project can blossom is if I don't spread my limited sunshine too thin.
So, right now, there are tons of games I'd like to be working on that I'm not. I'd like to write fiction but I've decided not too. Likewise music. There's a ton of little experiments and one-off projects that I just say, "Eh, I don't really need to do this."
That helps me focus on the few things I am still doing. (Right now, it's a second book on programming language interpreters, my hobby language Wren[1], and to a lesser extent photography[2].)
2. The above point is too heartbreaking to do on its own. I care about all of my weird little interests and hobbies too much to bury them forever. So the other thing I do is remind myself that I'm not killing a project, I'm postponing it. It's not, "Am I ever going to do this?" It's, "Am I going to interrupt one of the other projects I have going on to do it right now?"
That makes it easier to put things on ice. I know there can be a point in the future where I'll get back to it. And, when I do, it will be more fun because I won't be overwhelmed by other projects.
I am also willing to table projects. With many things, I work on it for a while, and then put it down and work on something else. Sometimes it takes me years to get back to it. That used to bother me a lot but now I just figure it's how I work. (It does cause problems for stuff that's open source, though, because contributors may not want me to put it on ice.)
I do still feel stretched thin a lot, but it's not as crazy-making as it used to be.
I think "you" are the hub. The spokes are your interests going in seemingly different directions. Once you reach a certain length on the spoke (proficiency) you then get to the tire which is the realisation that you can see how it all links, and works, together.
"So — what is a point? Grothendieck’s insight was roughly that a point is a landscape with only one place to stand — or, a little more precisely, a point is a space where all functions are constant."
How is it possible for people to get stuck in such a tight spiral? Not saying that we understand every way a business can be run, but this is like spiritualist sociology.
"Paint drip" as a descriptor is not very insightful. Paint drip shape is simply what you get when you lay out all our skills horizontally and assign random depths to each one. Everyone is a paint drip shaped person by default.
T-Shaped was used to distinguish people based on skills. Presumably the prior thinking was just generalists and specialists. T-Shaped acknowledged that some specialists might have some skills in other things. By saying everyone is a XXX you remove any value that categorization might have.
I say screw the metaphors and just understand what skills people have as you need to, because simple categories are only useful for simple decisions.
The terms has always been "t-shaped skills" or "t-shaped people." That fact that it's primarily used to describe desirable characteristics of employees is secondary at best.
But yeah, this article generally captures my thoughts about the "T-shaped employee" thing, except that I personally want to be "bicycle-wheel shaped" human. First, a human, because my employment does not define me, and by "bicycle-wheel", for lack of better term, I mean many specializations in different areas that end up connecting with each other.
As for the feasability of the "T-shaped" vs "paint drip", I think the latter is better - sure, ceteris paribus, you won't be able to put as much energy into many things as you can put in one, but I believe there are diminishing returns in specializations - and since the job market, like most markets, is terribly inefficient, you can probably get away with multiple specializations up until robots replace us all.