Navigating Career Crossroads: Generalisation or Specialisation in Product Development

Mike Scopino, Aleks Safarova, Rory Madden at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://youtu.be/XuoddUJeMk4

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Setting up the debate

[00:00:00] Rory: Okay, thank you everybody, and welcome to the Discovery stage for day two. I would like to welcome Mike and Aleks to the stage, who will be our debaters for our debate today. It's going to be on generalization versus specialization. Now, what we mean by this is, at UXDX cross-functional teams are kind of core to what we're working on, or how we believe is a better way of building software products. But in a cross-functional team, if you've got six to eight people, you can't have the same number of people on a project. I've worked on projects in the past where I counted 26 different specialities that we worked with as we went through. But if you try to reduce that to a cross-functional team, you end up needing people who have T-shaped skills or comb-shaped skills, where they know a lot more about lots of different things instead of just being very deep and specialized in one core area.

[00:00:57] Rory: So our debate today is going to be on generalization versus specialization, and we're going to be looking at it in a couple of different lenses. Is it better for the team, is it better for the company, is it better for the individual? We're going to have a fantastic debate. It's two people from the same company, so we're hoping they still speak afterwards. I hope you're really looking forward to this, so without further ado we're going to kick off.

[00:01:27] Rory: Companies need speed. That's kind of the trend that we keep hearing. Can we go faster, can we go faster, can we get things out the door? So we're going to start off with the first question: are generalists or specialists more efficient? Who's quicker? And we'll start with Aleks. So over to you Aleks, and your time starts now.

Round one: who is faster?

[00:01:50] Aleks: Thank you. Well, in the debate between a generalist and a specialist, we must admit each have their own unique strengths. And I know my opponent is going to say that a specialist's deep domain knowledge will ultimately create a faster and higher quality solution. However, I think this type of thinking is rooted in the idea that we're solving for patterns that are known, for known problems, versus what I think generalists are amazing at, which is solving for the unknown problems.

[00:02:20] Aleks: Especially in today's market, where companies increasingly have a lot more complexity in the things that they're dealing with, plus the innovation speed of technology advancements right now, it's really hard for employers to understand what type of roles they need because of the ambiguity. And this is where I think a generalist shines. They excel with having a breadth of knowledge and pivoting fast when an employer needs a new direction. So this is where they're amazing at it.

[00:02:53] Aleks: And I know from my own personal experience, I started as a specialist. I went to an art school, I was studying painting, then I went into design school where I wanted to kind of get the breadth. And now I'm even more so doubling down on the breadth of my generalist training, where I'm doing an MBA, and I feel like the diversity of industries I'm learning for, and the subjects where I'm not feeling as comfortable in, is making me more efficient in solving complex problems.

[00:03:29] Aleks: So ultimately, what I'll leave you with: speed is not just about rapid execution, it's about pivoting, and making sure that you can pivot and adapt no matter what you have to solve for, making the complex problems more efficient to solve for ultimately. So thank you.

[00:03:46] Rory: Excellent, and now from the specialization side of things. Two minutes starts now.

[00:03:52] Mike: It's great that we started with this, because we both agree on speed. On our team we refer to it as a bias for action, and the way that I've seen that be most successful within our organization is by bringing the right specialists together to solve problems. They have deep knowledge, and so let's let them take ownership of that area of any problem.

[00:04:16] Mike: Now, Aleks mentioned unknowns. There's so many of them, there's even unknown unknowns, we're all facing those. And she's argued that a generalist can better approach those and solve those, but I actually think a specialist brings something that's very helpful in that situation when there are unknowns, which is a lot of confidence. We build confidence when we repeatedly dive deeper and deeper into an area of focus that we have past projects on, we have formal education on, we're getting better and better.

[00:04:45] Mike: So by the combination of bringing together different people with different specializations, working in harmony, and each of them having built upon so much past experience in those areas, going deeper and deeper, we can really pick up the pace on projects. We can really have that bias for action, validating as soon as possible, shipping as soon as possible. And then if you do that on a project basis, you start to do that project after project, and you really scale that across your organization, and your whole organization gets faster.

[00:05:13] Mike: So while there is this sense that a generalist can do a lot of things, it's the harmony between different specialists that I think is really the key to bringing the best product at the best speed. And I think that that is contagious across the organization in the best way possible, that when we get a team who's working well like that, it's an example for others, and the speed can keep picking up and we can keep learning as quickly as possible, which is the way that we make the best products and we solve those unknowns.

[00:05:44] Rory: Excellent. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to get some audience participation. I want to know, who do you think was the more convincing argument there, when it comes to speed, when it comes to efficiency? Is it better to have specialists or is it better to have generalists? Oh, an early lead, but... Wow, that is pretty consistent. Interesting. Okay, so nobody's convinced, or we're definitely not getting a convincing argument. So let's move on to the next question. I'm going to call that one a draw, because it keeps hovering, and if we left it longer it would even out again. So we're calling that one a draw.

Round two: which is more effective?

[00:06:36] Rory: Now I want to move on to the question of which is more effective. So we talked about speed, but what about quality? What about the quality and the effectiveness of the work that you're doing? So this time we will start with Mike.

[00:06:50] Mike: Yeah, so I just mentioned bringing people together, I mentioned how confidence also builds from specialization. And I think that we have to get over the stereotype that generalists are the only ones that think holistically. It's absolutely not the case. Specialists understand what they know and they understand what other specialists know, and it's about that coming together that enables them to do their most effective work.

[00:07:22] Mike: I could do a lot of jobs within our team. I know enough to be dangerous, as we like to say. It doesn't mean that I should, it doesn't mean that I'm the best person for that job. That's why we have our specialists that own those different areas of the design process, those different disciplines. And they keep a constant awareness of our overall business goals, of our customers, of our users, and what other people within the team need.

[00:07:51] Mike: So I have a colleague in the audience on our design systems team. Those components that he helps create for our system are so impactful for me in my work. He doesn't necessarily have to be there to do all of our user testing, or all of our work with the interactions of the product itself. When those components come together he's able to build those individual pieces and really support me, and in the end support a better product. Similarly, a user researcher may not be there doing every piece of the prototyping, but they're giving us the insights that we need to do a better job.

[00:08:27] Mike: We work in this harmony together. We're totally aware of what others are doing, and that raises the quality across the board, it makes things as effective as possible. So while we do say that generalists see that holistic view, actually the specialists all do as well, and yet we still bring that deeper knowledge to our own area.

[00:08:50] Rory: Excellent. Compelling arguments there for the specialization, but let's hand over now to the generalists.

[00:08:55] Aleks: I won't deny Mike saying that we need deep knowledge, but who's to say that a generalist won't have — while having breadth, they could still have deep knowledge. And the modern tools make it much easier for us to access information now, with the help of advanced AI tools especially.

[00:09:14] Aleks: The other thing I want to say is, when you think about people like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, these are people who had some knowledge of a domain expert, but they were also really focused on the breadth of knowledge. A generalist is constantly learning, they have that growth mindset, and that pushes them to innovate. And isn't effectiveness tied to innovation, ultimately? You can't deny that.

[00:09:49] Rory: Okay, so now we've heard the arguments for the effectiveness, so the quality. So what are we thinking? If you can all take out your phones and vote and we'll see which one we're leaning towards. If we end up with 50/50 again this is going to be quite interesting. Generalists might be edging it. Okay, we'll give another few seconds, but I think the generalists might edge out on this one. Okay, so generalists are just in the lead.

Round three: which is easier for the individual to learn?

[00:10:25] Rory: But let's move on to looking at it — so that was kind of more from the company perspective, but as an individual, is it easier to learn a base level of information across multiple areas, so become a generalist, or is it easier to just zone in on one particular area and get deep expertise? So we'll start with Aleks.

[00:10:47] Aleks: I've talked about it previously in my point, that becoming a generalist is much, much easier. The cost of searching for information has gone down a lot, and right now you could instantly search and scour the web and find the information you would need. I would argue that actually, being a specialist, with so much knowledge available for us, you really have to know your knowledge more deeply than ever. So I think the barrier to becoming a specialist is a lot harder.

[00:11:19] Aleks: Also, our educational system from the start teaches us the frameworks needed in conceptual thinking. So we're trained from the start not to just generalize facts, but actually think about it from a framework, conceptual perspective. So you see all the tools, people starting to dabble in art. There's a really big boom in the creator economy, and I think that's amazing, that generalism can allow you to do that. It's not just gated for a specific few now. And that's kind of what I'm thinking.

[00:11:58] Rory: Excellent. So over to Mike to completely destroy those arguments.

[00:12:00] Mike: Well, this one is a little easier, because this is the first thing that she said that I think is completely the opposite of the truth. What is out there for us to learn, whether that's formal education, conferences like this, or even just the YouTube algorithm, to dive deeper and deeper — it's so much easier to take iterative steps further along the specialization that you are interested in and the one that you're working on.

[00:12:27] Mike: You grow yourself a lot like you grow a product. You don't go from one to ten overnight, and you can't go in all directions at once. It's hard enough to be great. Everybody's here just trying to get better, we're all trying to learn and continuously get better, but if you're doing that in all directions at once you're really doing yourself a disservice. And there's a little bit of a sunk cost fallacy in this too. Just because you started to learn something, you might be telling yourself, well, I have to keep that skill up, and I have to keep that skill up, and I have to go in all these directions. And it's not the easier way to do it. It's so much better if you can focus.

[00:13:03] Mike: And then the materials that are out there for us, and the formal structure, the informal structure, or even just the project experience within your job, project after project, you're going to grow steadily in that direction through those small iterations on expanding your skill a little bit more, like a tree almost. And we'd mentioned at the beginning like a T-shaped skill, or a T-shaped sort of person. That's always something we reference. You have one core competency, the highest value area that you bring, and then you have others that help you harmonize with the rest of your team, help you overlap between different disciplines. You don't want that T to fall over, right? You can't extend those arms so far out that it's no longer a T. You really need to focus on that core pillar. And I say this as a manager also. People might think of a manager as a generalist, but I am a specialist. I'm here to grow a team, I'm here to grow process. That's my core competency. Everything else is secondary to that.

[00:14:02] Rory: Excellent. So now we're looking at, is it easier for the person, the individual, to become deeply expert in one area or have a broad range of skills?

[00:14:19] Aleks: The tension, the tension. "Completely wrong statement" is what...

[00:14:26] Mike: Yes, help me with the Michelangelo reference.

[00:14:28] Rory: But now, okay, so we've tied it up, it's one apiece.

Round four: which is safer?

[00:14:34] Rory: Now, going into our last question: is it safer to be a generalist or a specialist? And what we mean by this is from your personal job security perspective. Is it safer if you have a broad range of skills, or if you're very kind of deeply skilled in one particular area? So yeah, Mike, take this one.

[00:14:56] Mike: This one's tough, right? It is really hard to apply, interview and find jobs. It's hard to continue to grow within your own job. It takes work in both of these cases. But what I've found from my own experience and what I've seen — so my experience as a person looking for work, my experience as a member of a team, and my experience hiring — is that specialists stick out. And the reason for that is because what every team needs from the individuals on it is clear value.

[00:15:27] Mike: You're secure and you're safer, and you're overall a better team member, when you're delivering a clear value, and that's what a specialist is doing. It doesn't necessarily matter what your specialization is, it's what helps define you as a member of a team or as a candidate. So you'll rise up in your applications, because when we're hiring, what are we doing? We're looking to fill a specific need in the team.

[00:15:53] Mike: In this economy we're not saying, oh, adding five more designers would be great, wouldn't it be nice just to have more cool people on our team. We're saying, I have problem A, I have problem B, I need the people that slot in and fill that. And as a specialist it's so much more clear that you fill that role.

[00:16:13] Mike: Now, if anybody in this crowd wants to start a startup with me where we find a way to interview people by embedding ourselves in their previous jobs and watching them ethnographically, I'm with you, because that would be the best way. But when it comes to actually considering a large number of candidates, to interviewing, and even just to within your own organization really standing out amongst the crowd, within all the other designers, all the other teams, that specialization is really going to differentiate you and it's going to show that clear value that you provide. So I wish that I was in the audience 10 years ago, had seen this talk, had taken that advice. But I highly encourage you to concentrate on that value and it will make you stand out.

[00:16:51] Rory: Excellent. And now it's Aleks's turn to rebut those points.

[00:16:54] Aleks: I think my opponent probably wants me to say, well, generalists could adapt to different roles, and argue the safety from an employer perspective. But I'm actually going to say, from a safety perspective from the person: when you are stuck in a career that maybe is not motivating as much, you probably are doing worse in your job. So by having the ability to pivot if you want to, because you have a broad range of knowledge, will ultimately actually make it safer.

[00:17:27] Aleks: As a leader, I want my designers to be motivated in anything that they're doing. And when people can embrace things that are outside of the expertise they've been doing, the same job for many years, it's much better for the person. So I think ultimately — well, it depends how you define safety, but I think safety comes from motivation, and then people can have an actual impact, and therefore their jobs will be safe from both the employee and the employer perspective.

[00:17:59] Rory: Brilliant. So now we've heard all the arguments on safety, so it's over to you. Which argument did you find more compelling? Oh, it's climbing, it's climbing. I think it's slowing down there. Being a specialist is boring, you're doing the same thing day in, day out, let's face it. Brilliant. People are really clicking the reactions, great.

Closing arguments

[00:18:36] Rory: So we're going to do now closing arguments. This is the last chance for people to say what they really feel, and this is going to be the vote at the end for you to say who's won the debate. So over to you.

[00:18:51] Aleks: Okay, as someone coming from KAYAK, we love numbers, and I wanted to leave you guys with this. McKinsey suggests that up to 370 million workers globally might need to shift occupations in the next decade. Automation could now allow employees to spend one third of their time on new work. So what does that mean? Versatility of skills is much more important than the focus of skills. So now we need to emphasize that learning how to think is much better than learning what to think, and that's what generalists excel at.

[00:19:30] Rory: Brilliant. So Mike, your closing arguments.

[00:19:34] Mike: Referencing McKinsey, that was very VP of her. This is good. I don't have a similar number to give you. When I thought about the topic overall, I always just come back to us as people, us as the individuals that we are. As I said, managing a team, it's about the process to make those people successful, it's about helping them grow.

[00:19:57] Mike: And I think about limits. I think about the realities that we work within and the limitations that are within those realities. And when we design, a lot of the time that limitation is a really powerful constraint. It helps focus us, it helps us move forward. It's not a negative thing. And I think about this in our careers as well. Whether some of those limitations are internal, like, you just really shouldn't let me illustrate, I'm not the person to do it. Whether some of those are external, where you have other parts of your life, you have other things that use your time, you have structures within your organization that kind of allow you to only grow in certain directions. We have to work within those limitations. We have to set expectations that meet the reality that we're in, and we have to maximize our value within that.

[00:20:44] Mike: And back to the point I made about the ease of this, I just don't think you can maximize in all directions at once. I think it's unrealistic to think that you can do so. And especially at a time where AI is getting better at doing any one of these tasks, I think being a specialist enables you to concentrate on a direction, to develop that strong deep understanding, to build confidence, to be a great contributor within the overall team of other people, and to understand how to harness that AI as a tool for yourself to amplify what you're doing rather than to be replaced by it in some way. So I think that, in summary, we all have to work really hard at this to be great. We all have to choose where our value is, we have to always be moving in that direction, and as a specialist it's the way to do it.

[00:21:37] Rory: Brilliant. So you've heard the arguments on both sides. Can we do the drum roll again? Which way is it going to go? Oh, specialists are climbing. Congratulations. I think we've gone with the generalists now. I do think we're probably a little bit biased by the people we have in the room as well.

[00:22:05] Mike: I think so too, it was a harder sell.

[00:22:07] Rory: Including Mike. It was a harder sell, you really are. But I hope you enjoyed that.

Q&A

[00:22:12] Rory: Now we're going to open it up for some questions, so I'll give you time to just type in some questions on your phones. I'm going to ask the opening one while you're doing that. You were pitching — I'll start with Mike — you were pitching for specialists. What's your real opinion? Are you as dedicated as you were saying, or do you think there's a difference?

[00:22:36] Mike: I'm dedicated to most of the things that I said. It's not necessarily how I self-identify. I think that what you can't say when you're trying to defend a certain point is that a lot of this comes from just who you are inside and where your interests lie, but I think that factors in a lot. So even outside of design, if you just take my life, I am a generalist. I love going in all directions. But I do truly believe that I've watched peers of mine who chose to be much more focused on a core value really excel by doing that. So I think it comes into compromise, but like all things it's sometimes about balancing your personal feelings, your personal who you are, and your tastes.

[00:23:21] Rory: The same question to Aleks.

[00:23:26] Aleks: While I have a variety of interests, I think I always used to identify as a specialist, just based on my learning and growing. But nowadays I was kind of challenging myself to — I think even as a designer, I should say...

[00:23:45] Rory: You're still a specialist though. Yes, you work in different industries, but you still specialize in the skill of design.

[00:23:51] Aleks: And there's fundamentals that we have to know. And now I pushed myself to step outside my comfort zone and go into the generalist side by doing this MBA, and that put me in a much more uncomfortable place, but I actually love it because it helped me grow and learn. So while I identified first as a specialist, I'm now embracing that actually being a generalist is helpful, because you see things from way different angles than you usually do.

[00:24:22] Rory: Great. There was a question up there but it's gone down. That tied into your point, so we'll start at the question and we'll come back to that one. About moving as you change in your career: is there value in being both at different points in your career? When should you be a specialist versus a generalist? I'll start with Aleks, because you were kind of touching on that, as you've changed.

[00:24:41] Aleks: Yeah. I always thought that it was really good to be a specialist first, because you could build that foundation, you learn how the game and the rules are played in order to break them, and then you start dabbling in other places. But as I was trying to prep for this debate, I read that — I think it's Roger Federer — he's one of the best tennis players, and he started actually as a generalist. He played a bunch of sports. When you think of tennis, most kids start young and they grow, but he dabbled in a bunch of other things before even committing to the one. So I think there's actually a lot of — depending on where you are, I think there's a lot of value in maybe starting broad, trying out a bunch of stuff, and then you narrow on what you want to do, establish some foundation, and then go back again to trying different things. So I think switching it up is important.

[00:25:43] Rory: Anything to add?

[00:25:46] Mike: I would just say I think it's great that these days there's so much more UX education in college. I started at a time when you basically got a print degree, a print graphic design degree, and then figured out a lot. So I do think you can be more general and explore a lot more in these programs that are available, which is really good. And always say yes to opportunities in your career as well, try it out. But I think it takes a lot of discipline, that at some cadence — yearly, quarterly, whatever you want to do — you really give yourself a retrospective and ask if some skill that you picked up is really going to add value to your career or not, or if it should be part of the top of the T instead of the core.

[00:26:30] Rory: Excellent. So we have a red herring: "You must learn, go deep on one topic to learn how to learn and develop a framework for acquiring new knowledge, but if you stick there you're incurious and won't grow." Too rough[?]. So I guess what they're coming at is that if you don't go deep, you don't know how to go deep, to pick up a skill set. Do you think that? So it would be the opposite, I guess, of your "let's go broad to figure out what I'm interested in before going deep".

[00:27:01] Aleks: I think there is value in both, and I think it depends on where you are in your career. If you have a lot of interests, maybe it's good to plant a bunch of seeds and try things out until you find — there's people that really know what they want and they go for it, and then there's people that might need some time to try a bunch of stuff before they pick that deep thing to go into.

[00:27:24] Mike: Ultimately it's a tough one. I do think that you sort of expand your way of thinking if you do go that deep on one topic. I don't think it's a necessity, but I do think that curiosity is a little bit separate. I think you can be extremely curious as a generalist or a specialist.

[00:27:43] Rory: I'm just seeing that the person who's scrolling is walking off, so bear with me a second, doing some very last-minute — can you just mark those two questions as answered at the top? And can you just mark them as... Apologies for some technical difficulty.

[00:28:01] Rory: So, when building a team, would you prefer all generalists or all specialists? You can't say a mix of both. That's just harsh.

[00:28:12] Mike: Oh yeah, that's tough. It's a good question. What I'll say is, how large is the team? I probably would say I do ultimately want a team of specialists, because I want them to understand the value in the other members and how to pass things back and forth. A specialist doesn't mean that you work in a waterfall fashion, it just means that you understand how to lean on the values of others, and that there's a lot more of passing the ball back and forth as you go through your cycles.

[00:28:50] Aleks: I know you can't say both. I know this is a hard one. I actually think it's really hard nowadays to find people that only know one thing, ultimately, and that's why I think this question is kind of unfair.

[00:29:06] Rory: What about — if I phrase it slightly differently, because you'll often hear a thing of hire for attitude, skills can be trained. So would the attitude be somebody who's just curious and is learning and has got the side hobbies and is picking up things? What's the attitude that you would be hiring for, if it wasn't for a deep specialization?

[00:29:28] Aleks: I think you're absolutely right in that we have team values at KAYAK, and one of them is having a growth mindset and staying curious. Because I think when you're in a field of design you're problem solving, and I'm hoping that's what you got in it for, because you're just excited by how do I solve this, how do I solve that. So I think curiosity is super important, and it activates everybody else on the team too. If you have someone that's just coming into work, just clocking in the hours, that's going to change the dynamic of the team. So you're absolutely right in saying that I'd rather have someone curious, who will say "I don't know how to do this, but let me go and figure this out", than just having — actually, I've seen it on the opposite end, you hire someone who's maybe just brilliant at this one or a couple of things, and then they can't work with the team, their egos get too big, and they're less patient because this other person doesn't understand. So attitude is everything, because you're always playing on a team sport, it's not just you.

[00:30:36] Rory: So Mike, that was kind of contradicting what you had said there. You think you can train the skills, get the right attitude?

[00:30:46] Mike: Yeah, you can definitely train the skills, but the person has to put the time in on them. If you have a person who has a great attitude in all ways but they want to equally learn 10 skills, it's going to be much harder than if they're open to learning the one or two that really are a fit within the need of the product development team. I would say that the attitude that I look for the most is — I don't think you can train people to be detail oriented, and it's harder to train them to be resilient. By resilient I mean, we had four questions today; at some point last night I threw one of them out. I'd fully written my answers, I just looked at it again, it wasn't right, it wasn't going to work. How do you start over? How do you get user feedback that totally contradicts what you thought, and you leave it behind and you move in that new direction? How do you do that as frequently as possible? It's so key to any of the specializations. So yeah, I look for detail and I look for resilience.

[00:31:49] Rory: So the next question — we've kind of touched on it a little bit — is, should managers be generalists, specialists in the teams? We have kind of touched on it: in your careers you've become more generalist as you've gone into management. What do you think? I'm going to pivot it slightly: dual-track career paths are becoming more common, where you have more senior individual contributors. So do you think that in order to grow in your career you do need to become more generalist, or do you think it is a viable option now to stay a deep specialist as you grow?

[00:32:22] Mike: I'll take this before she can definitely talk about our dual tracks — we have that. I just want to say that as a manager, the bad habit that I have to remind myself to avoid, that we see in a lot of managers, is jumping too much into the details and doing the work of the specialist. So if I'm a generalist and I have a team of specialists, but I'm trying to do their jobs for them, that's not actually a generalist, that's just kind of a bad manager. So whether you consider yourself a specialist or a generalist as the manager, you have to trust the people on your team, and you just have to focus on developing them instead of jumping in any time there's a problem. But yeah, if you want to talk about our tracks.

[00:33:00] Aleks: Yeah. I'm going to double down on what you said, and I agree with that. I think a lot of times — I've seen this — it's natural just to go in and do the activity. But what people really need to know is the how and the why. They don't need you to tell them the what, and actually then you're not really training people to do better work. So I would agree with what you said. And we do have the dual tracks. One other aspect I will add is, when you're managing especially creative talent, I think you do need to understand where a designer is coming from. Because you were a specialist at one point, you now start to see, okay, telling them exactly what to do will limit their creativity, won't help them learn. So I think you need to know the industry you're in.

[00:33:59] Rory: Brilliant. Well, that brings us to time. There are a lot more questions; we'll copy those into our Slack channel and we'll ask the speakers to answer them there, along with all the other questions from the last two days. So can you give a big round of applause for our debaters today. Thank you. And the final thing then is, if you could give some feedback, because you never know how things are landing or what can be improved, and the speakers would really appreciate that. So thank you. I'll hand back to Kevin. Wonderful.