Generalist or Specialist?

By nature I'm a generalist. A lot of my peers in IT are specialists -- so much so that I'm sometimes the oddball on a team. I think it's a natural product of my "inattentive" ADHD -- I get bored before mastering anything and am easily distracted by shiny objects.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this because I just saw this comic playing with the idiom "jack of all trades, master of none":



And it made me wonder if Permies trend one way or the other.

I do light gardening and electrical and plumbing and can throw pots and cut down trees and cook and organize a budget and weld and frame a wall and a million other things but none of them with enough skill that I should be doing it as a paid trade. Are you guys like that too, or do you deep-dive into fewer areas and really master them?

(The very-last line of that strip really speaks to me.)

mostly generalist, with certain areas of specialist interest.

my world is way too complicated to deep-dive everywhere, but i do enjoy moving towards mastery in my ‘hobby’ areas.

I ama generalist with wandering interests.  This results in intermittent specialization, but never long enough to actually be a "specialist".

Grok AI will give you super powers.

I just learned that the saying has a little bit more to it.

"Jack of all trade, master of none, but often better than a master of one".

I'm a generalist too! I like to tell folks I am good at rough work and okay at finish. Always am working on improving my techniques.