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All employees can be conditionally divided into two categories: generalists and specialists. Both companies need them. Which way to choose to develop your own competencies – we reveal in the Trends material
About the expert: Ksenia Rumbesht, Head of Human Resources Development and Leadership Competencies, Innotech Group of Companies.
What is the main difference between a multifunctional employee and a narrow specialist? If we talk about the classical view, then the first one knows a little bit of everything, and the second one knows one thing, but deeply. For example, you can be a full-stack developer or understand all the nuances of Java. Both the one and the other employee will be in demand, but they will solve different tasks.
In the modern world, it is important that a person speaks several frameworks and languages, since everything changes at high speeds, and therefore you need to be able to learn and adapt to today. Highly specialized knowledge is now in great demand in areas where IT is seen as a science. For example, where a specialist is primarily required to have fundamental knowledge of mathematics or physics, and only then – programming and other engineering skills. It is important for us that a person understands several programming languages - this makes it possible, upon completion of the project, to quickly move to another team where other frameworks and languages can be used.
In startups, “all-in-one” specialists are often valued, because there are few people in the company, but there are many tasks. In such a situation, everyone has to take on several roles: write code, manage a team, recruit new employees, and engage in operational activities. But large companies already have a clear structure, departments, assigned areas of responsibility – and here such multitasking is required to a lesser extent. For example, the director of recruitment will no longer deal with training issues if there is a separate unit for this task.
Transition to T- and π-shaped employees
Nowadays, more and more emphasis is placed on T- and π-shaped knowledge, when experience in a particular area is combined with a broad outlook.
Т-shaped
T-employees like to develop not only core skills, but secondary ones as well. For example, there are different areas in design — research, prototypes, user interaction, and so on. A T-shaped specialist may focus on one of them, but be interested in all the others.
A team member who can play multiple roles depending on her needs increases the likelihood that she will achieve success. For example, if all QA engineers fall behind during the functional testing sprint, a developer or business analyst can help them.
π-shaped
This is the next stage of the T-shaped – the specialist already has two important additional skills. For example, this is a developer who is also very familiar with UX design or testing. Employees who have expertise in multiple areas provide the team with greater flexibility, which is especially important for companies with limited resources.
How to develop as a specialist
To be competitive, it is not necessary to be the best specialist in what you do. Additional points in employment can give secondary skills. For example, backend development combined with UX design or knowledge of mobile development and business experience. Therefore, in order to develop, you need to take the following steps.
Make a list of skills to develop
To find them, you can see what problems are around and how they can be solved. For example, if most people in the team have low communication skills, then developing them in yourself will be a great idea.
How else to choose skills:
- Look for combinations that are rarely found in one specialist (marketer and Python developer).
- Develop those that complement each other (design and copywriting, Java and testing).
- See what is missing in the company, community or area of expertise (investment and development).
- Start from your own interests (design and travel, machine learning and biology).
Develop a learning plan and learn
If June (junior developer. — Trends) wants to grow to a middle (advanced developer. — Trends), it is important for him to be curious: to be interested in trends, to find out what languages and frameworks employers pay attention to, and to build a career path in the industry that he likes best. Now there are a lot of educational materials – articles, webinars, courses. Habr is actively developing in terms of content. You can search for a community by interests to exchange experiences with older colleagues. And the same advice works for middles and seniors who want to level up.
At the same time, not every senior (senior developer. — Trends) should become a lead. If an employee does not feel the strength and desire to manage a team, then there is no need to strive for this. Unfortunately, IT professionals do not immediately understand that at the lead level they should not code, their task is to manage, and they need to program only in risky situations, for example, when everyone suddenly falls ill. If there is a desire to develop in this direction, then you can go to study the management sphere.
But when an IT specialist wants to develop in his field, for example, he is a fan of Data Science, then he can stay in it and develop expertise. In our company, such specialists are called critical experts. As a rule, these are high positions at the top management level, but they do not manage a team and have a huge set of knowledge in their field.
Now in our country, a lot is built on independent and corporate education, because so far the level of most IT graduates leaves much to be desired. But it is already clear that universities are raising the bar and preparing strong juniors at the end. However, when hiring, companies set their own standards, which are determined only by managers who are looking for people. And the necessary set of knowledge will come from the level of expertise in the team itself.
Organizations also need to create the learning environment that employees need, as the demand must come from them. A separate learning process should be built for each task. It can be both hard materials only for Python developers, and soft skills development classes that will be useful to everyone – teamwork, communication, time management, and so on. And knowledge should be accessible so that everyone can pass it at any time. And then the company will get those specialists who will help it develop and achieve business goals.