Is this, perhaps, the death of Generalism in general?
When I studied computers, back in the iron age of computers, the study was called Computer Science.
When we questioned, once, the wisdom of calling the course of study Computer Science, we were told that Physics was once called The Physical Sciences. When, in due course, the study of computers was understood by everyone to be a science, the language would follow and drop the redundant tail.
But is that what has happened?
My first job out of undergraduate school was at the university itself. I was a programmer. As my skill grew, I became a programmer 2 and then a 3, and then ascended to the lofty designation of programmer/analyst. I asked what that meant. I was told, “someone who is capable of more than coding, capable of analysing a particular situation and recommending an appropriate response”. Huh? Who made up these categories? I wouldn’t have lasted a month in my first programming job without doing that.
Our second or third course in programming languages contained this nugget: every programmer must analyze the situation to make sure he is using the right tools (languages, editors, etc) for the problem, and that he is solving the right problem. For that reason (amongst others) there was an entire undergraduate course just on computer languages, so we’d see how many different tools there are, and how they differed in power and strength depending on the problem to be solved.
So I took the job reclassification, of course. It was, as I recall, a pay increase of about 10%. At the time, I was tickled at the extra spending money, which I used to top up my RRSP.
Today, with more miles under my belt, I would ask for it retro-actively, since I’d been doing that all along.
It was, though, the first time I ran into this funny idea. There are people who expect to just solve the problem without completely understanding it. And supervisors, managers, etc, who accept this low level of performance. In school we called this a solution in search of a problem, and it was very much to be avoided.
So an analyst, someone who can ensure first that they are solving the right problem,with the right tools, is already a step up from a basic programmer? Why?
If you took your car to the mechanic, and he picked up a plumbers pipe-wrench to loosen the hub cap lugs, wouldn’t you be alarmed? If he picked up a Phillips head screwdriver to tighten a Robertson head screw? A knowledge of the right tool for the job is pretty much a baseline assumption for most occupations.
Has the study of computers been turned into a science? Have we dropped the (by now should have been obvious) Science designation yet? I don’t think so. My old Alma Mater still has a department of Computer Science.
Worse, most computer people these days don’t call themselves Computer Scientists. They are Information Technologists or worse IT Specialists.
When I went through, we prided ourselves on being generalists. We could learn any system by reading the documentation and experimenting for a day or two. We could learn any computer language by taking the manuals home and reading them cover to cover twice and spending a day writing “Hello World” programs to figure out the compiler syntax.
Have you looked at a job posting recently? They don’t ask if you’re good with computers. They ask for knowledge of specific software packages, a specific level of vendor certification on a specific product. It’s a bit like hiring a toolmaker and saying “must be vendor certified in the use of a 16 oz ball peen hammer”.
What’s going on here? First of all, the job description is so specific, we are led to assume the person who wrote the job description has already done the needs analysis and knows, very specifically, what current and future needs are for this position. But do they? Are they, themselves, computer scientists, capable of knowing and recognizing the correct tool for the job? For now and for the future?
Or are we to assume the job is not meant to be durable and flexible? Will the job be terminated when the needs change? Suppose we find we really need to use an 18 oz ball peen hammer instead. Will we fire and rehire?
In other words, why have we stopped hiring and prizing generalists? I don’t know.
But I do know that many blunders, are avoided or mitigated by generalists, people who know more than their narrow field of expertise. A business, or, more importantly, an entire society of businesses, who does not use these very valuable people, is ultimately trading away some of their most impressive strengths before the first faceoff.