Diversify Your Skill-Set, No Matter What Your Career Goals
A recent article by Norman Matloff from Bloomberg argues that although software engineering jobs are extremely attractive in salary right out of the gate, that attractiveness diminishes rapidly by the age of 40, as employees lose relevance and are tossed aside in favor of younger grad's. Essentially, there's somewhat of a glass ceiling for CS grad's according to Matloff. In order to break the ceiling, you need to be one of the lucky few who finds their way into upper management.
My takeaway from this article--no matter what career path you choose, make sure you have more than one major skill to offer. Those who make it into the upper echelons of any field seem to more often than not be extremely good at multiple things. We often argue on this site about hard vs. soft skills, Econ vs. Finance, liberal arts vs. science, but why not strive for both? It's easier said than done, but if you can marry the two in some manner, the sky is the limit.
This is very true. Professionals I have met in high positions (ex-Global Head of IB at Credit Suisse, Global Head of FX at Citi) have reiterated the necessity to diversify skills. Both of them were able to figure that out early on and were able to utilize their versatility to understand the bigger picture ideas high level managers deal with.
though how do you avoid being jack of all trades and master of none...
It's good to master several things but this can lead to spreading yourself too thin - and you have to consider the opp. cost of learning of adding in another skill vs continuing to master what you already know.
Main point is one should continue to evolve and learn in whatever field they are in, but be careful about adding in a new skill if it will cause you to fall behind in one you already have.
this makes sense, but life is all about proirities and opportunity costs.
for example: i work in coporate finance, and occasionally spend a little time outside of work developing my primary skillset through reading books, attending seminars, etc. with my remaining time I could:
1) devote myself to becoming competent in an alternative skill like programming which can be a contingency plan in the unlikely situation that the demand for corporate finance analysts were to disappear. 2) spend time pursuing the things that I enjoy, like working out, martial arts, being with friends and family, etc...
for me, the expected utility of the latter is much higher than the first.
I would tend to agree. I would argue though to at the very least diversify to the extent that if and when it's time to move up the ranks, you have the skills to do so/differentiate yourself from the competition.
i think it would be wise to look for certifications / skills / knowledge sets / etc that are loosely related to your career but not entirely, and be able to interweave aspects of both to improve your performance. someone else basically said the same thing earlier in this thread.
I think it's more of an ability to see the larger picture and develop new ideas / think outside the box. Also, social skills and the like are extremely important if you want to go up the ranks. There are very few (no) people that are experts in more than one field, but there are certainly many people who have technical and soft skills. Google CEO Larry Page comes to mind. As does Bill Gates and many others. It's not only being a monkey, but being a monkey with a vision and the drive/skills necessary to implement them.
as the OP mentions liberal arts, it reminds me of Paul Graham. Absolutely brilliant programmer and has a PhD in CS from Harvard, but ALSO studied painting at RISD and in Florence, Italy. How did his career turn out? No glass ceiling for him - but he's a startup guy, which is a little different.
This reminds me of something in Valve's employee handbook, which has been circulating around the web lately. It says that the most valuable employees are "T-shaped"; that is, they have a good breadth of skill and knowledge to draw from, but have a depth of expertise in one specific area.
In the modern corporate world you are supposed to develop what's called a T skillset. That means you should have many small skills (horizontal part) and something you are a master of (vertical part). That's the compromise that Andy was referring to. So in the example set by sayandarula, he shouldn't devote himself to programming, but he should do something like take a short course in some language, just 1 afternoon for 2 or 3 months, or maybe read a book or two, even if it takes time. Then find something else, and so on.
Recent research shows that he people who specialize early in their career or study, tend to have a steeper salary curve, meaning they reach a higher salary is less time than people who have a broad skill set. This is especially true for people studying finance and law.
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