Recently, I came across a new jargon term, the T-Shaped Engineer. I think the general idea is that you used to have a “specialist” or a “generalist”. Now the perception is that it is good to have a compromise between them.
A generalist is like the adage, “A jack of all trades, but a master of none”. You learn new technologies but not achieve a deeper understanding – since mastering anything requires you to dedicate massive amounts of time to the craft. When challenging work needs to be done, engineers with deeper knowledge are needed; aka the specialist.
Specialists devote their time to a narrow set of technologies. They probably don’t learn the newest technology unless it falls into their specialist domain.
Work was often prioritised based on what resources were available. If a feature required more developers with a certain skill-set, and they weren’t available, then the development had to be postponed. If the company hires more developers with the required skill, when priorities shift, you can end up with spare/unassigned developers. This was a hard balancing act for the Product Managers. Sometimes, the developers could end up being asked to take tasks they wouldn’t normally do.
This has led to a new kind of engineer – the “T-Shaped” engineer. This describes a person whose knowledge distribution looks like the letter T. The horizontal line represents a broad knowledge in multiple areas, and the vertical one represents a specialisation of a topic.
Theoretically, having a full team of T-Shaped engineers with their own specialisation means that work can be prioritised. Whilst they may have a broad general knowledge, managers need to remember they can’t perform exceptionally everywhere. The concept isn’t a silver-bullet.
If “Pi-shaped” and “comb-shaped” developers exist, then you would think those would be the developers to hire. I suppose if you do find them, then they will be rare and demand large wages.
References:
What are T Shaped People? Youtube video
Stranger Coding Tings 