Good at many things -- Master of none

Posted by Joshua on Aug 18, 2008 * Add comments
Categories: LiveCycle DS , AJAX , General , AIR , Coldfusion , Flex

As the title suggest, this is a topic that I have been thinking about a lot lately.  I tend to be a jack of all trades, but in my case being a jack of all trades means that I never have the time to really get good at one thing.  For me this has become a serious problem that I plan on resolving soon.  I started looking at my life in general and I am this way across the board, not just at work.  I decided that I would try and figure out when I started to spread out and I narrowed it down to my Sophmore year in High School. 

My family moved from Vegas to a small town in Southern Missouri (Branson).  Las Vegas had a huge music program in the school district, there I really did a good job of being one of the top young violinist in the city.  I held first chair in the cities youth orchestra a couple years in a row, I was on my way of really being a Master at something (so I was told). 

When we moved, unfortunately there wasn't a orchestra program, so I started playing the French Horn in Band and my violin started taking second in terms of my focus.  At this time in my life is when I started doing all sorts of things, Track, Football, Band, Jazz Band, Violin and Choir.  You could say I was really good at Music, but I wasn't a master... I think doing all those things really helped me become the person I am, however that tendency to do it all stuck with me and frankly it's now become quite annoying and even a hinderance in some cases.  As I have become older I want to be really good at a couple things or at least one.  I want to lead, go the distance, you know what I mean right?  Do it better than others!

At work, I work mostly alone or with one other person who has similiar skill sets, unfortunately because of this I don't get to work with a UX guy, CF guru, Flex master, Flash animator, etc... I have to figure it out myself and get it done.  I also don't get the opportunity to bounce ideas off more than one person, something I really believe is extremely valuable in learning and expanding your knowledge on a technology. I know there are Pros and Con's to this, you could argue there are more Pro's, but a really Big Con that seriously bothers me... is the lack of being a Master.

So I have decided that I want to get more specialized in what I do for a living, I have about 3 choices-

  • Flex/AIR
  • UX
  • Coldfusion

I see a lot of great things coming out of the community from people who are really focused in a skill set and because of that they are producing some awesome work. 

So, back to why I posted this, I am curious what the community thinks about this, do others struggle with this same issue?  How do you deal with it?  Also, what focus do you think is more needed than others (UX, Flex, AIR, CF, LC, Other)?  Let me know!


6 responses to “Good at many things -- Master of none”


  1. Luke Kilpatrick on  Aug 18, 2008 at 1:07 PM

    Luke Kilpatrick I can see exactly where your coming from as I was in the same boat in pretty much all of my positions before joining Broadchoice. I found that UX became my strong point and I have adjusted my learning into that direction, however I have worked hard to keep up with CF and AIR, etc. as If you can push or massage the application to match your UX it requires long trips back to the developers which can take up lots of time. Mastering 1 segment is good but keep up with your secondary skills via usergroups, online lists etc.

  2. Andy Sandefer on  Aug 18, 2008 at 1:35 PM

    Andy Sandefer This is a pretty interesting post. Just be certain that you get behind something with long term potential and as wide appeal as possible so that you have a strong level of job security. I am totally focused on CF. I would like to gain knowledge related to Flex and AIR but honestly the awesome AJAX power of CF8 has allowed me to create whatever I need to without having to learn Flex. I'm hopeful that when I do get to the point of using Flex that all of the JavaScript code that I've written will help ease the transition to ActionScript. Specialization is ok but I will say that hands down you should sharpen your database skills no matter what. Throughout the last 10 years Structured Query Language has been the one true skill that I've used universally no matter where I was working and no matter what technology platform I was working with.

  3. B Roberts on  Aug 18, 2008 at 9:42 PM

    B Roberts Solution: Go work for Bill. You'll be able to become the master you've always wanted to be. He just hired an outside super high caliber programmer (equivalent to a master Jedi programmer) that you can learn lots from.

  4. Praveen on  Aug 18, 2008 at 11:50 PM

    Praveen I am also in the same situation. I joined a job., which was something the HR guy promised me at the time of joining, and the other I am doing at present. I am not much experienced(actually only one year) to shift the job immediately or not in positon to resign it.

    I found Flex very intresting, but my heart is on the other side (.net and Ajax). I cant jump the bandwagon right now to the other side but doing one thing where my heart is not there and it is destined to do.

  5. John Whish on  Aug 19, 2008 at 9:26 AM

    John Whish I wrote a post recently which touches on some of the issues you've raised here. My general thoughts are:
    * Join a User Group (There are Flex and ColdFusion ones listed on the Adobe site)
    * Go to conferences
    * Read FAQU and the new Flex Authority magazine
    * Look at other people's code and step through it to see what is going on.

    I personally think that Flex is going to be in high demand very soon and as a result (due to the close integration) are ColdFusion and LiveCycle.

    If you're interested in my original post it is here:
    http://www.aliaspooryorik.com/blog/index.cfm/e/posts.details/post/how-to-get-a-job-at-broadchoice-117

  6. Josh on  Aug 19, 2008 at 7:42 PM

    Josh Interesting, I spoke to some folks this week about being a "Jack of All trades", they do agree I definitely have my hand in a lot of cookie jars, but they think because I do it makes me that more valuable to be on the team. I guess there is something to be said about that, although I still want to start focusing in on something and still keep the other things as secondary skills.

    Thanks for the feedback and the discussions, they are always beneficial. :)

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