All of us can only recognize expertise up to a certain depth. Beyond that, experts seem to be the same. So if you have broader knowledge, you will appear to know more.
And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a king.
In my opinion, I think most humans strive to be generalists but our economic system typically incentivizes specialists. It makes sense because from a systems perspective, the more specialized a component in my system is, the more efficiently it will perform its task leading to potential overall efficiency improvements. Assuming that machine doesn't need to adapt/evolve much or that specialized components for future adaptions are easy to obtain, it's a net positive effect. Businesses are no different than such a system (of people and their processes) so businesses reward specialist labor more because that labor rewards them more by supplying low cost solutions to consumers. Trying to find rewarding positions for generalists these days can be quite the challenge.
Unfortunately, I find this approach sort of flies in the face of human nature or perhaps just my nature and anecdotes. I enjoy digging down into subjects and fields well beyond a surface skim, but I find digging to the depths gives me little satisfaction. I start to get a bit of diminishing returns of enjoyment as the more depth I desire, time investment begins to increase (in a non-linear fashion). I would also add that in many areas I've studied, you reach a point where the information and knowledge is no longer certain and then various opinions begin to branch out from experts in the field and I find this is usually a good stopping point.
As such, most subjects reach a point where I decide it's time for something new: I've learned many of the important aspects and if I need them at some point or have new found interest, I have a great starting point.
You're not the only one that feels this way. I love the deep dives into a given topic, but at some point it just becomes too much and/or uncertain/divergent.
I think this might just be your personal preferences; I know quite a few people who are happy to focus on something very specific for years. To them, "the point where the information and knowledge is no longer certain" is where things become interesting, not where they stop.
This is a false premise, at least when stated so generally.
Look at Google, a company that is known for compensating workers quite well. They mostly hire generalist software engineers, which I think is due to a combination of reasons:
- Google is a big established company where a lot of the work is not the sexiest in the industry. This means that people don't necessarily want to stick around in the same team forever. This means people need to switch teams every few years in order to keep their job interesting, which is much easier for a generalist.
- Generalists can specialize and go back to different work later if it makes sense. It's harder for people starting out as specialists to do this.
- There's uncertainty as to what projects will be available to work on in the future. This means that specific kinds of specialists may not always be needed.
- Many teams aren't big enough to contain all the specialists you might need for the project. Having people who can wear many hats solves this problem.
And even if you are a specialist hired at one of these big companies, you will often be doing generalist work. I’ve heard more than a few FAANG software engineers say, “I have a Ph.D in [specialized field] and spend all my time plumbing protobufs from one API to another!”
> our economic system typically incentivizes specialists
I don't think business rewards specialists. The business people (at the top) are generalists. They can recognize some specialization but not too deep. Whether you have only one eye or two eyes, they will not be able to tell the difference.
> you reach a point where the information and knowledge is no longer certain and then various opinions begin to branch out from experts in the field
I would argue this is the horizon of the expertise. There might be deeper expertise behind this horizon, but you cannot see it because you cannot make sense of the different opinions (without more expertise).
When looking at this like coaches and players, players are often the experts and coaches are often the generalists. We all know, though, in business, coaches tend to get paid WAY more. So it behooves most players to become experts, in order to be the best player, so that one day their efforts will get rewarded and they can ascend to coach-dome.
But there are many, many coaches that were never experts. Some of which are privileged psycho-sociopaths who have worked their way up the coach ladder by playing that game, which is a different exercise entirely.
This leads you to the question, is it better to be a coach-coach or a player-coach? Furthermore, how does a new coach (who is not a sociopath) compete against both coaches and players trying to be the next coach? Where is the lane for the natural, generalist coach?
All lanes are hard, but the generalist-coach lane is very hard for those without an MBA, and without certain cut-throat tactics, which seem to be the base playing rules in that lane. Then, even if you get the title, earning the respect of the player-experts is another challenge.
Generalists may have their day, and lanes-per-niche may be more or less difficult for generalists, but it is not such a triumph. From my perspective, at least.
And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a king.