Since at least the 16th century, the Western world has looked down on people who stretch their talents too far—to the point that we have the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." But I'm not sure how true that statement is in 2024.
Although I've found a lot of success in niching down as a freelancer, I see other writers thrive covering broader topics. And what about folks who specialize while still having a broad skillset?
I asked professionals across industries and with all sorts of backgrounds about their experiences to see what they thought about the generalist vs. specialist debate.
What does generalist work look like in 2024?
Looking at global data, generalists play a huge role in today's workplace. According to O.C. Tanner's 2023 report based on data from over 36,000 workers, 52% of employees identify as generalists. (The eBook notes that these generalists worked throughout the workplace, including in customer service, HR, and supply chain.)
A little over half of employees in the survey also noticed their organizations employ and hire more generalists than specialists. While these stats don't indicate an overwhelming preference for generalists, it's a far cry from the notion that they don't offer professional value.
These statistics set a broad context that generalists have an important role to play in the world of work. But where do they thrive the most? And conversely, when is it better to be a specialist? Here's what self-titled generalists and specialists have to say on the matter.
The benefits of being a generalist
After consulting both generalists and specialists, the generalists shared these reasons for their approach.
Versatility in work
Generalizing leads to more versatile work, which can make the workday more exciting if you value a mix of tasks. Your mileage may vary here, but I talked with a few generalists who got more fulfillment out of this route.
After spending time in HR benefits, HR Business Partner Daniel Space found much more fulfillment in work by becoming an HR generalist:
"When I transitioned into being an HR generalist, it felt FAR more fulfilling—now I was working with employees when they were focused on the company and not just when they had a benefits question. I could help them understand and design training needs. I could work with compensation to determine our pricing models and financial reward approaches. I could be a point of contact when they were lost about their career and wanted guidance, or work with a manager when an employee was struggling with performance."
Randye S Spina, founder of Marketing on a Mission, firmly advocates for generalizing because it's how she works best and finds the most satisfaction in work. In addition to running a marketing consulting business, she teaches marketing and communications, writes, serves on a nonprofit board, and has a Reiki I certification.
"It's very frustrating to be told by society that a professional has to specialize in order to be marketable," Randye says. "I can't even imagine having taken the other route to become a specialist. It isn't how I'm wired. That's what makes the world go round...we all bring our own talents to the complexities of business and life."
Ability to translate across industries
Working in multiple industries or subject areas helps you communicate ideas across those topics. This varied experience makes it easier to relate to folks across departments and subject areas, lending itself to more empathetic communication.
Emma Orr uses her experience across multiple related industries to write content in easy-to-understand language so it resonates with her target audiences. As a freelance bid director, she helps organizations win bids. While she niches into clean tech industries such as solar and electric vehicles, she also plans on taking more generalized work from other clients.
Sticking to clean tech lets her tap into her existing contacts and knowledge of what a good bid looks like in the industry. "But as a generalist," she says, "I get a lot more exposure to many different industries and the breakdown of their bids. As a non-subject expert, it also means I write in layman's terms because that is how best I understand. This works in everyone's favor because procurement departments who make the final call are also usually non-technical and certainly don't know about every proposal document which comes across their desk."
Potential for leadership
A generalist skill set lends itself well to leadership roles because you get experience in multiple aspects of business. A few people I talked to have careers involving complementary roles that came together to give them the knowledge they need to lead.
Dan Fugardi, CEO at Instyler Brands, acquired a company with more than a billion dollars in sales by familiarizing himself with skills and industries he knew would be useful on a broad level. He told me:
"Rather than calling it a 'generalist,' I see myself as being an ecosystem expert of sorts. Throughout my career, I have strategically made a stop in industries that I knew I would see again and knew would be useful in the bigger picture, such as technology development, banking, consumer retail, manufacturing, real estate, and brand protection. And then within those, I've spent real time in each department you will find in a company to the degree I roll up my sleeves. For example, instead of having my attorney write a contract and give it to me for notes, I might draft the whole contract and give it to him for notes."
Darian Shimy, founder and CEO at FutureFund, started to become more of a generalist after picking up more leadership roles, where he found he needed the broader view to lead more effectively. While his initial specialization in software engineering gave him solid technical skills, he wasn't always aware of broader business contexts. As leadership roles at Weebly and Square Online pushed him toward generalization, he discovered how important it is to be flexible as a leader.
"This transition was driven by the realization that to lead effectively, particularly in tech-oriented businesses, one must understand not just the 'how' but also the 'why' of different business functions," he told me. "It also highlighted the importance of flexibility in leadership—being able to adapt strategies and approaches as the business landscape evolves."
Rebekah Bastian climbed the ladder through multiple roles at Microsoft, Zillow, and her own startup using transferable skills. Her journey started with two degrees in mechanical engineering and now has her running product and marketing at Glowforge:
"[T]he skills I've built up around strategy, creative problem solving, and leadership are all 'generalist' skills that can be applied to a wide range of areas. The benefit of this for me is that I get to keep learning and growing, taking on new exciting challenges. And the benefit to the companies I work for is that they can count on me to step in and lead in a wide range of areas."
These stories have the same lesson: learn the skills that take you to your ideal destination. Taking a generalist journey to do so has the benefit of letting you learn on the job instead of having to carve out time during your after-work hours.
The benefits of being a specialist
There are reasons to go all in on specializing, too. Here's what I gleaned from the professionals I consulted.
Skills to nurture
Specializing lets you focus on the skills you excel at so you can do better work. You'll have more time to practice and dig deep to provide high-quality services or offer more expertise to your team.
In some professions, you need to specialize to move forward in your career. Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Audrey Schoen explains how this works for therapists: "While many therapists start out as generalists as we collect our training hours for licensure, over time we find there are certain issues or populations we feel drawn to. Specializing allows us to do our best work with the most ideal fit clients. When we hone in on what we are great at, we also deliver great service," she says.
But specialization can help even in professions where you don't have to niche down. When I chose to specialize in marketing and productivity topics as a writer, I could see the quality of my work increase. My familiarity with the subjects lets me spend more time developing arguments that resonate with readers instead of trying to familiarize myself with the basics.
High-paying opportunities
A specialist approach opens the way for more lucrative opportunities. If you work for yourself, you could see more prestigious clients and higher-paying gigs. Knowledge workers can also reap the benefits as they find unique roles to pursue.
After specializing, Audrey Schoen could ask for higher rates and get more clients to agree to them. "I feel confident about the work I do and the transformation I can offer, and clients appreciate that I have a deep understanding of their problem and how to resolve it. Clients are often more likely to agree to higher rates when they know the person they are working with is specially trained and experienced in their particular need," she told me.
Brittany Betts, SEO Specialist at FloridaPanhandle.com, also experienced higher pay from specializing instead of generalizing. She told me: "The main difference I see in specialization is the higher pay for being the go-to expert on the subject matter. I find that with generalists, there are a lot of different areas that they need to focus on, which is great, but that means they don't have as much time to dive deep into each individual topic."
I agree with these perspectives: I was also able to make more money as a freelancer and get more leads when I specialized. When I first started out, I looked for gigs in all sorts of subject areas and had a hard time getting traction. But once I realized I could niche in business-to-business software as a service (B2B SaaS), I could use my experience to get higher-paying projects.
Well-paying jobs exist for specialists who work for an employer, too. For example, in summer 2024, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) had multiple high-level roles open related to content specializations. For example, one role has the employee work entirely on content remixes. The leadership roles had pay ranges well over $100,000/year.
Better leads and projects
When you specialize, the clients and projects you follow become more specialized too, leading to more fulfilling work. Independent workers like contractors and entrepreneurs get leads that align with their work styles, and knowledge workers take on more satisfying projects.
Even though Hillarie Kay has fewer leads after switching from Enneagram Coach to Enneagram Informed Burnout Recovery Coach for High-Achievers, those leads tend to be a better fit for her business:
"When I was more of a generalist, I found that not all my clients ended up being the best fit. Sure, I was able to attract more people as a generalist—my social media had more engagement, my email list grew faster, etc. However, I started getting frustrated because even though my business was growing quickly, I was getting clients that weren't as great of a fit for me personally, and made me not like what I did as much. When I switched to being more of a specialist, I didn't have as many leads, but the ones that did/do come through are a great fit and restored my love for this work."
Therapist and Licensed Social Worker Jenny Flora Wells finds it easier for clients to find her after specializing. She's noticed a rise in mental health concerns where patients can struggle to find the right match among all the therapists out there. "As I branched into private practice, I specialized in trauma, artists, and adoptees. This has made it easier for clients of these populations to find me and allows them to be seen sooner by a therapist who is most aligned with their unique background," she says.
People who don't work for themselves can benefit, too. You'll be assigned to more challenging projects that allow you to dig deeper into your expertise, and you'll likely find yourself in high demand when tough problems arise.
The case for the T-shaped professional
Two of the people I talked to brought up an approach that lies between generalizing and specializing: the T-shaped professional.
Here's how General Manager at DesignRush, Gianluca Ferruggia, defines this concept:
"In the debate between generalists and specialists, I see the future belongs to a third type of professional: The T-shaped employee. A T-shaped professional is someone who has deep expertise in a specific area—it's the vertical bar that you see in the letter 'T.' At the same time, they have a broad range of knowledge and skills across multiple disciplines—that's the short horizontal bar of the T."
Gianluca is a firm advocate of T-shaped work because of its future-proofing potential. He says, "It gives you the expertise you need in your chosen area while also making you versatile enough to handle whatever comes your way. Most of the jobs we'll be doing in the next decade haven't even been invented yet. So, being adaptable is key. With this approach, you're always building on what you know, ready to tackle whatever new challenges come your way."
Daniel Daines-Hutt, Content Marketing Manager at Zero to Mastery Academy, shares how he's been in different roles in overlapping areas and how that T-shaped approach molded his career. He distills his adventures in the past 12 years or so into five steps:
Starting a successful clothing company and learning SEO to get more traffic to its website
Helping other eCommerce websites with SEO using the knowledge he gained with his own website
Expanding his services into copywriting and paid ads for better traffic performance for his clients
Learning content marketing and writing while writing a case study about his client work
Teaching others about content marketing and running the content program at Zero to Mastery
"Personally, I feel that having this general background has given me more of a 'T-shape' that all fits well," he says. "I think specialization is key, but you also need to draw from other areas if you want to improve. So finding supplementary parts that you can then generalize in, and bring back to your specialty is the best of both worlds!"
Zapier values T-shaped work, too. For example, Senior Managing Editor Deb Tennen specializes in top-of-funnel content like the post you're reading now, but she also runs the blog's newsletter, creates infographics, and performs other marketing-related tasks that keep the blog running.
Specialist vs. generalist: Which path is right for you?
If you look into the history of the "Jack of all trades" saying that I mentioned earlier, you'll find out that the "master of none" part wasn't originally there. At some point, we just started using the term against folks who prefer a flexible approach.
There's no wrong answer to whether you should be a generalist or specialist—it all depends on what fuels your development. If the benefits of one appeal to you more than the other, you should look into that path. As you develop your career, think of it as a river instead of a ladder, and find a path that fits your priorities.
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