I’m going to paraphrase Adam Savage.
I am mediocre at a lot of things. But the way I combine and use those skills are what make my skill set unique and what makes them great.
Okay this is actually what makes humans amazing. Btw the malört and Marx is talking now.
I feel like we are sold this idea to be purely a specialist because… It’s easy to know that your tool does one thing and one thing well. It really is a mindset that benefits a capitalist that a worker is good for one thing. How many jobs have you been in that you felt never utilized your potential? That you had so many skills that weren’t being utilized?
Marx characterized humans as being creative and diverse. We are amazing Swiss army knives, but so often our companies ask us to only be a screwdriver or a bottle opener.
Sadly if you are reading this thinking “I’m only good at one thing” it’s not true and it’s not your fault. You’ve been sold an idea that you bought into, and it may have even been beneficial financially. How many people are making $350k to turn a button blue and move it left 3 pixels? Our system rewards people when they are able to be tools for a specific purpose.
Oddly enough Marx predicted that the country most likely to be communist would be the United States. He actually really liked Americans, we were farmers in the morning, artists in the evening, and philosophers at night. We had overthrown the aristocracy, so it just made sense we would be the first to overthrow the Bourgeois class.
Turns out Marx couldn’t predict everything :/
I like that, some YouTube video i came across had the sentiment that it was ok to be a renaissance man, jack of all trades kinda deal. I liked that a lot since i have a few different hobbies and im not particularly great at any of them but im good for the most part.
Made me feel like i didn’t have to be perfect and it was cool to just be doing stuff.
Same. I have one or two things I’m really good at. And a lot of things I’m pretty ok at. In my field, theatre, being ok in a lot of things means I can fit into almost any space. Don’t make me your department head, but I can help pretty much every department except costumes. I used to think not being “master” level at these things made me a waste in space. Took me a while to realize “not as skillful” didn’t mean “skill-less.” I’d still rather be on stage but, I’m enjoying where I am for now.
Hobbies are one thing, you don’t need to be good at them to enjoy them, but being incredibly good at one specific thing tends to pay far better than mediocre at a lot of things.
You don’t need to be incredibly good at something either.
Often it’s just being who they think about when they want something done. Be the person they know they can turn to or the only person that can do it and that’s just as useful.
I’m in an engineering field, and I can tell you this absolutely holds true.
I’ve been very average in my own specialty of electrical engineering, but because I’ve taken the time to deep dive into mechanical engineering and controls/automation, I’ve far surpassed my peers career wise.
I am mediocre at a lot of things. But the way I combine and use those skills are what make my skill set unique and what makes them great.
I love this. It pretty much perfectly describes how I got every job I’ve ever had as an adult.
A jack of all trades and master of none, is often more useful than a master of one.
A lot of people forget the second half of this old aphorism.
Same for ‘a few rotten apples spoil a bunch’.
Yeah, that one is also infuriating to hear people misuse.
The entire point is not that its a small problem, its that its a big problem.
Along the same lines:
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
This was originally written as an obviously physically impossible absurdity, a modern equivalent would be the ‘plug the power strip into itself for infinite energy’ memes.
Yet it is instead used to mean … its time for you to do a lot of hard work, and then you’ll be in a better place.
When it instead was originally used to describe an extremely dire situation that cannot be solved by doing … the sentence above.
still means the same thing, just used incorrectly by dishonest and truly wretched people.
Astronaut be like
It’s tangential, but I often struggle to start things unless I can do it perfectly.
I have to remind myself “done is better than perfect”.
“Perfect is the enemy of good enough” is one of my favourites.
And done 5 times is better every time, more or less.
Perfect is the enemy of Skill, that’s great!
Have hobbies. Seriously. Stink at playing guitar or learning a foreign language like I do, but do it anyway.
What is this, the Vitruvian Spider-Man?
If I had all those skills, I would also try to climb up and look at butt mountain.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Jack off all trades and master a nun, yet better than masterbering just one
pretty sure that’s how it goes
No you jack off!
don’t minmax your skills, kids. if you do you’ll end up like me
I focused too much on software development, now I find it tedious and boring, plus AI will replace me in like 3 years, womp womp.
AI will replace me in like 3 years
I will have NONE of this defeatism.
Look at it this way: after AI replaces you, a lot of companies are going to eventually realize AI can’t cut it. Once that happens, you folks will be in high demand. You just… have to find a way to survive in the interim. :(
You can focus on 3 or 4 things and be expert at all of them if you uninstall all your mobile games.
Jack of all trades, master of none, yet better than the master of one
Yes, it’s important to skill stack in order to remain competi… Hey where are you going! No you’re not allow up there to live your own life and develop as you please! Get back down here to compete against others just like you!
…and whatever you do, don’t form collective sympathies for each other, against your economic “betters”.
For that would risk a general strike.
I do this too often lol, but I’m going to leave Range by David Epstein here as a decent read on the subject.
He partly frames it as a direct criticism of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, but Gladwell goes pretty overboard on what the research says. (For the actual science, Peak is your alternative. K Anders Ericsson was involved with the actual research and doesn’t take liberties and wildly over-generalize what it says.)
Anyways, the highly specialized and the broad knowledge base viewpoints aren’t incompatible. Both have value.
Just be
I’m in this picture and I’m loving it
Me, too.
However I am finding it hard to get a job. I got laid off in September. Employers want a square peg for a square hole. “Cisco engineer”, for example. I know enough to get around Cisco, Fortigate and a few others. And project management. And servers. And a dozen other technologies. With 20+ years experience. But I don’t find anyone paying enough for someone with a diverse skill set.
That’s more the fault of the company than you. We are at a point where companies don’t want to “waste money” waiting for a great employee to train up on their system and want drop in place cogs or to go for someone way cheaper abroad. My company is asking to only hire people that know our proprietary software or we hire people in the Philippines that aren’t even trained.
Don’t mistake the malice of the owning class as a personal failure for being multivaried, you would never be perfect in their eyes so don’t look at yourself through their lens.
Luck and networking is what gets people jobs these days.
I want to do a lot of things, and I don’t care if I am bad at them.
