As a software engineer, you might wonder what route you should take in your career — specialize in one area or become a generalist who knows a bit about everything but can easily switch technologies and frameworks.

Let's take a closer look at the pros and cons of each option and how to approach this so that you can make an informed decision.

The Pros and Cons of Specialization

If you choose to specialize, you will become an expert in your chosen area. This can make you more attractive to potential employers because they know they can rely on you to get the job done right. Additionally, specializing can make it easier to find a niche market to serve. Specialists also make more money in the short term as long as they can remain up-to-date with everything that is happening in their chosen field of expertise. Your colleagues, too, will constantly reach out to you for advice because you are the expert.

However, specialization also has its drawbacks. For starters, it can be difficult to change directions if your chosen specialty is unfulfilling or if the market for your skill set dries up. Additionally, becoming too focused on one thing can make it difficult to see the "big picture" and develop innovative solutions. You will have a harder time finding a job once you've reached a senior level with a specialization because employers tend to prefer someone who can quickly adapt to changing business needs and, so, changing tech. If you choose to specialize, be sure to pick an area you are passionate about and one with long-term potential. Having a few related areas you have a good idea about is also ideal, so you don't entirely bet your career on one thing.

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The Pros and Cons of Generalization 

Becoming a generalist has its advantages, too. The biggest benefit is that it makes you more versatile and employable because you can take on a wider range of projects. Additionally, being a generalist can help prevent burnout because you constantly learn new things and keep your mind fresh and buzzing with ideas. But being a generalist doesn't mean you never get to the depths of tech as a developer. It just means that you are not betting on your expertise on one tech to be the only thing that matters to your current and future employers. Being a generalist means you are very good at different areas and the fundamentals of tech, so you can quickly get involved with anything new that needs to be done.

There are a few downsides to being a generalist as well. For one thing, it can be difficult to establish yourself as an expert in one field because employers potentially see you as a jack of all trades. However, you can avoid this by making sure you not spreading yourself too thin. Additionally, learning everything can be overwhelming and lead to information overload and sometimes burnout. It's also hard to switch jobs more often when you are not yet in a senior position because employers look at junior and mid-level employees as experts in specific skills, not generalists. If you become a generalist, focus on quality over quantity when learning new skills and strike the right balance. 

How to approach this problem?

A simple way to look at deciding whether to specialize or become a generalist as a software developer is this. First, understand that the best course of action is likely somewhere in between the two extremes; after all, being too specialized can make you inflexible, while being too much of a generalist might mean that you never truly become an expert at anything.

Early in your career, make sure you specialize in a few things. This will help you build credibility among your colleagues and future employers and position you as someone who knows what they are doing. This reputation will also help you switch jobs faster, getting the growth you want and learning along the way much faster.

But as you grow into senior roles, focus on general skills that are applicable across technology stacks and frameworks. The more senior you are, the more your skills should be transferrable across various employers. As a side effect, you will also have an edge if or when you want to start your own technology company when you are skilled at various things.

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I write about growing as a developer, a tech career, and attaining mastery and faster growth in your role. — You can connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Another update: I am writing a book focusing on career development for software engineers. More information here: The 10X Engineer (book - coming soon!) - Dev Principles

In today’s world, where learning is ubiquitous, it is easy to discount the value of formal education. More so, in the case of an MBA, the high direct and opportunity costs seem unnecessary (apart from the time and stress that one has to go through). Besides, there are hundreds of CEOs of technology companies across the world who have been quite successful without an MBA.

Why MBA?

I was in the same boat, except, I took a leap of faith and joined the PGP at ISB after being in technology for over ten years. Here’s what I think with regard to how relevant an MBA is for a techie -

Take a break!

It is easy to say that one needs to be clear on what one wants to get out of an MBA. In reality, though, it is not easy to be clear on why an MBA is indeed needed for a techie. At a broad level, most MBA aspirants look at how they can supplement the depth that they have gained in technology with the breadth that they intend to get via the MBA program and achieve something phenomenal in their careers. However, with the rapidly-changing world, a one-year break from a job could mean that you might become the (same) person whom you hated when you were at your job. Do not be that person; consider an MBA only when you are sure that you plan to invest enough time in keeping your technology depth relevant to the changing world outside. With grueling assignments and academics, it indeed is a tough job, but no one ever said success comes easy.

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Networking like crazy

It is safe to assume for most, that an MBA is the last time life allows a formal break from a routine to rethink and re-plan the journey ahead. It is a break that allows you to discover or re-discover what you’re passionate about (important things) without having to think about the immediate needs (urgent things) in life. It allows you to finally formally focus on your long-term visions for your life. Even when your passion lies in technology roles and not necessarily taking up management roles, it helps you build the maturity to be empathetic enough towards the broader goals of an organization and how to keep looking for the 10,000ft view of things — things that are crucial in later stages of your career.

Resetting your career

In a top B-school, you work with some of the best brains from the industry and the finest in the nation. Just like how most learning in your job happens on the job, most MBA learning happens from your peers. For techies who buried themselves in code all their lives, an MBA gives an excellent and broad perspective of the various industries and opens up your ideas on how technology can improve the current state. The entire journey is a humbling moment of realization of how little we know of the world we live in.

Starting your own company

Many times (esp. more so, in the early years of your career), an MBA opens up opportunities to switch jobs drastically and make your mark in a new field that you found your passion in. It allows you to command higher salaries or faster career growth provided you strive to be a good learner about the domain. Every industry today is looking at how technology can help them sustain and grow their business. Understanding the domain (during the MBA), and being able to deliver technology solutions in that domain would be one of the best ways to contribute to the company you intend to join.

This is probably the most debated topic, as entrepreneurship and MBA never seem to go hand in hand. Despite the fact that running a startup helps you learn more things than an MBA program, in a practical sense, an MBA allows you to explore some of the most vital things that are needed to establish the company that you have been dreaming of building.

For one, instead of moonlighting on the job, or dreaming of “million-dollar ideas,” an MBA gives you the time, network, and opportunity to take the ideas to market by actually executing them.

Second, with academic and industry experts guiding you through your journey, you are only increasing your chances of success.

Third, the student network and alumni with some of the best brains in the industry are again here to help bounce off ideas, debate and build the company of your dreams.

Global thinking

There are so much more reasons I believe an MBA will help when you are starting out or even when you are not, but more on that later.

Last, but not least, an MBA helps you think at a macro level, and understand how the world economy is shaped into the way it is. It is an incredible amount of learning in a short span of time helping you understand the various dynamics of running a product or a business. It allows you to converse on a range of topics and develop a true sense of curiosity about everything around you.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list by any means, and there are a number of other reasons why techies should pursue their MBA.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

I write about growing as a developer and a career in tech and attaining mastery and faster growth in your role. — You can connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Good jobs give you a lot to brag about - The high salary, benefits and certainly the company's name. After all, the likes of FAMANG maintain a status that makes their employees feel better about themselves than the general developers in the world. The hard truth is that holding a job at a top-tier tech company makes you want to feed off of their status in the world. Besides, you have your preconceived notion of professional success reinforced by family and friends' constant compliments.

All this justifies giving your that your job is of the utmost importance for your identity. Or should there be more?

The concept of ‘enmeshment’ in psychology revolves around the blurring of boundaries between two people. The effect of this concept in the work context comes across when people blend their personal and professional lives. Many people are vulnerable to it because earning a living gives them an avenue to develop a purpose and confidence level.

This correlation may work well as long as your career is riding high. However, once you stake your identity with your job and root your self-esteem with its success, over-dependence on your performance can lead to a long work slump should you ever encounter the smallest failures. Consequently, it would be best if you learned to build an identity separate from your job.

The first step towards this is the realization that you are dispensable.

Coming to terms with the idea that you are an employee just as expendable as any other may seem like a recipe for explosive imposter syndrome, but it is not. The key to developing your identity as a professional is realizing that a job can be dispensable to you if you are dispensable to a company. This will motivate you to pursue your passions outside of work and build your personal brand as a professional, separate from your job. But remember, creating an identity has nothing to do with picking up a hobby.

It is a common misconception that taking time for yourself means starting something completely unrelated to your career. If you are a software developer with a passion for building, it doesn’t mean that you separate yourself from work and start doing yoga or learn to make kale salads; all it takes is getting involved in projects that separate you from your work, at your day job. Think along the lines of coding for fun, helping out aspiring developers on the internet and making tutorials or podcasts about the aspects of your profession that you like and dislike. Interestingly, these activities will soon replace work prioritization as a confidence supplement.

The second step is reconciling oneself to the idea that validation is not needed.

If you work at a company like Google, constant praise about your professional success from family and friends is something that you are probably accustomed to. Not surprisingly, human nature always drives us to seek more validation. If you start your own YouTube channel, you would want to share it with others, but try your hardest to resist the temptation! You are embarking on a journey of building an identity for yourself, making it incredibly important to give up the desire to be a model for vicarious reinforcement to others. Post your work to the world, but ignore the comments or turn them off your projects completely, at least initially. This will help you focus while ignoring the critics who could make you undermine the process.

Lastly, remember that your identity earns you success, not your job.

The brand you build for yourself will lead you to a happy and fulfilling life, while a job that becomes your whole life will most certainly not. Wrapping yourself in the aura of a well-known employer can feel like a safety net that sets you apart and protects you. This is not to say that identifying closely with your work is a grave misstep. Still, it can easily become one should your sensitivity to its success trigger paranoia about your performance.

Claim some time for yourself and create your own identity, partly to avoid a painful crisis of the same in the future and partly to recognize that you are much bigger than the company you work for.

Often, you tangle yourself in the things from the past, making it hard to focus on being forward-looking. Whether it is your investment into a college education that isn’t flowing into work or a previous job experience that is irrelevant in a new role — hanging on to something unimportant going into the future is an utter waste of energy and time.

But it happens all the time because we rely on previous academic or work experiences to help us build our careers.

As a developer who has no option but to be a lifelong learner, always focus your energies on things with a utility now or in the future. Be ready to discard skills when they are no longer relevant, even if you have used them for a long time and are familiar with them. Stop deploying half-baked code, even if it means abandoning a ton of work, and stop doing things that make little sense even when you already put in tons of effort.

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Of course, usually, when you have already spent time, effort, or money, you often feel attached, and it’s no longer easy just to discard things and move on.

The sunk-cost fallacy describes it best. People are reluctant to leave a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when abandonment would be more beneficial. An aversion to loss, combined with a hope of turning what you already know into future wins, even when it is unlikely to be the case, will lead you into making more losses. Being aware of the sunk-cost fallacy every time you must decide on something will help you evaluate many choices with ease.

Be vigilant of the commitment bias — a tendency to remain committed to a path you already choose despite knowing that it no longer makes sense under changed circumstances.

Be on the watch for loss-aversion bias — when you are trying to avoid a minor pain even after knowing that the upside is relatively much higher. Happens because you don’t want to experience pain, however small the risk/pain is.

Conquer your biases and learn how various factors lead you to make irrational decisions that can affect your career.

Learn to say bye-bye to things you don’t need anymore and move on. Technology keeps changing. You should too.

I write about growing as a developer and a career in tech and attaining mastery and faster growth in your role. — You can connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

After working at Microsoft for over a decade, I can vouch for this — It takes several years to realize that a career in software development is much more than mere coding. While coding helps get things out the door into your customers’ hands, it is the other things that you do that will significantly shape your career and define your success over the longer term.

Sometimes I wish someone just told me when I was starting out — how some of the simplest things that you ought to do as a software developer could end up being so career-defining and accelerate your growth at work.

#1. Build your identity

Your job at a cool (read, well-paying) company helps you brag about yourself early in your career. And even when you necessarily don’t, many in your circle will reach out to you for random help reinforcing your social position. Heck! Sometimes, your job may even help you score a date. Soon you’ll also realize that your identity is so tied up with where you work.

But it is never too late to realize that you are you, and there’s the company you work at. If you go to work every day knowing that you are as dispensable as anyone else and pursue your passion for building products at work only as a small part of something bigger, you’ll soon start to develop an identity.

Start writing blogs (even if into the void), answer questions on the internet, code for fun, or contribute to open source. Make podcasts and YouTube videos if you like to. If critics bother you, make pseudo accounts, turn off comments, or do anything that helps. But in the end, do focus on building your identity. Do realize you are much bigger than the company you work at.

Focus on your identity to ensure you don’t get into an identity crisis. Not at least the mid-life kind.

#2. Get exceptionally good at technology

Don’t be just as good so you can deliver what’s asked of you. That’s a low standard to hold yourself to. You should always strive to get extraordinarily good with technology and software development. That is not just a goal but is the foundation for a strong career in tech. This is not something you can work around by immersing yourself in “strategic” discussions outside of code that make you feel important.

Copy-pasting code or getting things to merely work without knowing why they do is a crime. It’ll only lead you to rely on assumptions and accrue knowledge debt. And often, you end up paying this debt along with huge interest in the form of sleepless nights and more effort unlearning your assumptions. The sooner you put in the effort to understand something right, the easier it gets.

Always start with the official documentation for the programming languages and tools. That should be the starting point instead of a random YouTube video or a blog or a beginner’s class in Udemy. This helps you hear from the horse’s mouth and puts you on the right path because you now have complete context on the how and the why.

Get exceptionally good at technology. That’s your job anyway.

#3. Start your day early

Start your day early. Come to the office (assuming non-pandemic times) by 8 am, sip the free coffee, and socialize. Connect with your peers who come in early — highly likely the most successful among the bunch. Discuss the products you’re building and how you’re selling or marketing — or anything!

Make progress on your work every day without postponing it till the inevitable deadline is 2 days away. No one cares if you worked late or pulled an all-nighter the day before to make releases happen. They might appreciate you, but many will secretly hate you for putting the project at risk. Always remember to put your team first.

By starting your day early and getting involved in broader discussions while also keeping pace with your work, your name will soon come up in good ways in meetings you’re not even a part of. Now people care. They talk about you. They think you’re smart because you know the big picture. Everyone walks into your office when they have concerns, or want to get something done.

Start your day early — Try it out, doesn’t take much.

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#4. Break the damn code

I’ve learned way more in my 15 years of coding by breaking things than building them. Most code is mumbo-jumbo anyway written to impress the computer, not those who have to maintain it and build on top of it. So, it’s only right for you to break it and learn from it. And if you don’t break it, the customers will anyway — through bugs and feature requests, and usability questions.

So — go ahead and break it — your code and others’ too and fix it with better code. Let someone else break that code too, and make it even better. In the process, make a few friends in the team — the same ones who hated you for coming in early or stealing the limelight. Chances are they’ll break your code too, and together you’ll learn and get better.

With every bug fix and feature, both the product and your skills are only getting stronger by the day. And more Anti-fragile.

Break the code and fix it. It’s worth it.

#5. Develop processes and standards

Whether you’re working at a start-up or a huge enterprise, you’ll always notice room for improvement. Be it code reviews, deployment checks or software builds, or anything else, find things you can improve at work and up your team’s productivity. Always focus on the processes, ask for feedback, and own the improvements.

You’ll not only get better at what you are already doing — but you’ll also soon become the go-to person. Developing processes is hard, and it requires you to level up your skills. And as you grow in your career, your ability to streamline work through processes and standards is essential for you to develop.

The processes you design help you get things done your way without losing control as you start delegating work.

In MBA, you’re taught, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” But Process can eat both even before they get to the breakfast table.

#6. Take up a tech side hustle

Technology side hustles are awesome. Design a plugin for a friend. Or offer to build an e-commerce storefront for a local business you love and shop at. Do it for free, so it lessens your stress about the time you will take to deliver or if you’ll get paid.

Taking up a side hustle develops your skills beyond software. The learning you get more than compensates for the efforts you are putting in. It often helps you realize the power of software and how it helps transform businesses — increasing your worldview on technology.

Chances are, the same side hustles will become paid gigs, help you with ideas at work, or someday even help you run your own business.

Hustle away — it helps you develop your world view on technology.

#7. Be a learning machine

Strive to be a life-long learning machine. Some may call you “Smarty Pants,” but the same people will soon look up to you and aspire to become who you are. Find learning in your job and from your peers. Take training, read a book, or watch a talk. Get hold of anything that helps you become more knowledgeable in different fields.

Filter the signal from the noise and start challenging traditional stances. While learning may not be natural, curiosity is. Asking questions about everything around you as part of being curious and trying to answer them will make you a great learner without much effort. Stock markets? Traveling to Mars? Environment? Climate Change? Solar energy? Electric cars? Autonomous driving? As a bonus, your learning will also help you be the person with the most interesting conversations at work.

John F. Kennedy once said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” and that is true now more than ever.

I write about growing as a developer and a career in tech and attaining mastery and faster growth in your role. — You can connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Let me start with an example. Early in my career, I worked on a project that helped combine many SQL databases and decommissioned roughly half of the servers and nightly batch processes, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings every year.

Come review time; I proudly noted that I "created SQL scripts that enabled data consolidation and migration." Do you see the issue there? Fortunately, my manager pushed me to re-align my year-end review based on the business impact. What I thought was minor work at the time was one of the key reasons I got an opportunity to interview at Microsoft's headquarters in the US.

Learn to project your work well, Presenting your work is your headache. Not your manager’s. Not your peers', and definitely not something your work will do by itself. Even the most beautiful paintings in the world are only worth much because of the art critics who interpret them.

There are specific steps to doing this, and once you get the hang of it and see its benefits, you would not try to do it any other way.

• Look for the impact that your work has had, and not the work itself. The impact you've had should be relevant to the group and the company you are working at.

• See things objectively, not subjectively. Stop using better, faster, and easier. Tell better by how much, faster by what multiple, and easier how. Objectivity helps you measure.

• Keep yourself so objective there is nothing that's up for debate. Subjectivity leads to discussions and opinions. Use objectivity to fight.

• Keep it concise. When you want to project confidence, concise wins hands down long-form any day. It shows that you know what you are talking about without padding words that don't contribute.

• Talk about the time it took. Always. Your achievements are worth much more when you did things in a shorter period. Make that stand out.

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If you’re fortunate and have terrific people who dedicated their lives to helping you propel in your job, they may speak for your work. But 99% of the time, you know this is not the case - they exist only in fairy tales.

So, just like a piece of art's true worth is revealed by a critic, your work, no matter how brilliant it is, requires someone to speak for it, and that someone should be you.

I write about growing as a developer and a career in tech and attaining mastery and faster growth in your role. — You can connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Most good software engineers dedicate their lives to catching up with the latest trends in tools, programming languages, and frameworks. And, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It pays well to be on the top of your game, especially if you intend to frequently move between jobs. And if you’re a new software developer or just a few years into your role, I believe this is the right to do as well. But as the years pass by and things get more sophisticated, this approach doesn’t scale. Besides, unless you dream to be coding even at the time of your retirement, it doesn’t even make sense.

Coding is a small part of the larger game.

Like it or not, most software solutions merely address a small part of a larger business problem. The code you write or the software solution being developed won’t make any sense if it doesn’t fit into the larger business solution. Whether you just started your software career or are many years into it, it always makes sense to understand what your code is solving for the businesses your company serves. Only after that, you would have a greater understanding of your impact on the company. Coding is not the same as building, and rightly so.

Code keeps changing; underlying principles don’t.

Most code keeps changing with changing all the time. Changes in business needs, changes in the technology stack and frameworks, people moving out, or new hires - everything changes code all the time. The only things that don’t really change are the underlying principles of programming - which is also why good companies always focus on CS fundamentals such as data structures and algorithms, allowing candidates to program in their choice of language during the interviews. Only when you think beyond code, you can develop a stronghold of such software principles, ultimately gaining mastery over software engineering itself.

Coding skills are the baseline for your career growth.

As a software engineer, if you cannot build, you are not an engineer in the first place. So, as you navigate your career, most people who work with you only view this as a baseline - something that’s a given. And as you perfect your engineering skills, what matters most to everyone you are working with is what you are known for beyond your coding skills. Your ability to articulate things in ways all the stakeholders can understand, your ability to make decisions and keep moving, your ability to evaluate risks and think of mitigations, or simply your ability to lead, among several others, are going to be the differentiators.

Coding for the sake of it will often lead to mundane work.

Many software engineers love to work on the latest and greatest code even if it means that they are working on mundane things that have little to no impact on the business problems they are solving; and to do that, they often cite lame excuses. Unless there is a clear relationship between the work you are doing and the business impact it could have, the enthusiasm could quickly fizzle out. Your motivation is high only when you are working on things that have a real business impact. Keep thinking beyond just coding every time - often applying the Pareto principle; 20% of your work could have 80% of the impact you want to make - and always pursue work that has the highest impact.

As you grow in your software engineering career, you would want to focus more on the soft-skills aspects of engineering than merely coding. That’s what we want to help you with, at devprinciples.co.

If you like what you are reading, please do consider sharing it with others who you think will benefit. And if you don’t want to miss our next post, do subscribe to our newsletter for free

Until next time!

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And just like potato chips, tutorials too, have an adverse effect of excessive consumption landing us in a “tutorial hell”.

What is “tutorial hell” exactly?

Tutorial hell is when you continuously watch one tutorial after another, expecting to rise from your deep dive into Udemy as a master of your trade but realize that you did not learn anything practical once you actually start building.

But what lands you into tutorial hell in the first place? It is the sense of comfort. With tutorials, you have someone tell you precisely what needs to be done, creating a pseudo-classroom that leads you to believe as long as you are listening, you are learning.

With tutorials, it is also easy to measure how much you think you have learned. For example, 15 hours of tutorials translate into 15 hours of learning for you.

However, this is far from true.

Are tutorials ineffective?

Tutorials are not ineffective whatsoever. They create a solid foundation for experiential learning to build upon — but only when used in moderation. This is similar to how schooling or college worked — they form a great foundation, but aren’t directly helping you with gaining expertise at work.

Each tutorial is a solved problem, where all hurdles have been passed and solutions found. An overdose of such spoon-fed solutions, though, is what will stunt your growth as a developer.

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How to escape tutorial hell?

The first step towards escaping tutorial hell is to start building. Use the tutorial you just saw and apply it to an old project or replicate the code and customize it to a new project. As soon as you start running into problems, seek help.

Escaping tutorial hell through a simple application is easy and has the added advantage of benefitting from the 70–20–10 model.

If you are not familiar with the 70–20–10 model, it says:

• 70% of the learning comes from job-related activities (in this case, applying tutorials to build projects).

• 20% of the learning comes from others (seeking help when you get stuck applying what you have learned).

• 10% of the learning comes from formal and informal training (watching tutorials).

So, use tutorials as a starting point but avoid falling into a rabbit hole by building your own projects or forking some existing code to refactor. Even consider contributing to open source raising pull requests — whether the pull requests get approved or not is immaterial.

The idea may seem intimidating at first, but you will learn way more about coding by building than simply watching someone else code.

I write about growing as a developer and a career in tech and attaining mastery and faster growth in your role. — You can connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Why do some developers grow faster than others?

Is it because they code better? Mostly, yes. But — do all the developers who code just as well grow just as fast in their careers? Have you ever wondered why a handful of developers always seem to have the growth they desire (or deserve) leaving others team members behind?

In my 15+ years of career as a developer and then an entrepreneur, I learned a ton, and I am here to share.

The barrier to entry for becoming a developer is super low right now, but the effort it takes to become a great developer has never been higher.

You are at the right place if you’re here to learn and design your career as a software engineer for high growth - aspiring to become a 10x engineer.

I blog mostly every week, but sometimes more frequently on the various factors that help you become a developer that companies fight over, to hire.

I’m also writing a book that will be released in Q1-2023 on the same subject. If you’re already subscribed to the newsletter, you will get periodic updates about the book as well.

Also, if you wish to connect with me for anything, I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn.