IT Generalist

Today, companies are looking for as much bang for the buck as they can get. I'm way overqualified for the job I'm in and was hired because I stood out as someone willing to do the job, despite much greater training. It is better to be employed than to not be employed. So I'm back doing what I started doing over 10 years ago, but I keep teaching myself more as I go. I'm pursuing compuer security since that seems to have potential locally.

Anyway, the more you know and are willing to do, the better chance you have of getting a job from a company (through normal channels). Others in the forum feel you are better off selling yourself to the higher-ups directly or working for yourself, but I think that takes a certain personality or level of confidence that many IT "geeks" may not possess (unfortunately).

My experience tells me that most of the mid/large companies that are doing that ("you get to do everything") don't see IT as a true business partner but as a cost center. A necessary evil, if you will.

Obviously in some situations it's an issue of being able to afford only one or two people, but in larger enterprises the issue may very well be that folks don't see the value IT can bring to the table ("can", not "does", because it's not a given) if given the resources. They see $$$ going out, timelines that take longer than they expect they should ("what do you mean 15% of the time is for testing? You shouldn't need more than 5%!") and little return for the dollar they spend, and as such look to keep IT expenditures down, forcing a "jack of all trade" situation.

The term DP/IS/IT generalist has been around for quite awhile. Usually comes up during the peaks and valleys of the IT industry. When times are bad business leaders try to overextend IT to save money. When times are good, the generalist has to do everything because help isn't readily (cheap enough) to hire.

No one person is going to be a really good "generalist". The first divide is programming or development versus the support or engineering side. From there you can divide admins from engineers from security from help desk. The list goes on and on. I can do alot of those things but I can't do all of them well enough on a daily basis to call myself an expert.

Hope that helps.

- beads

I am an I.T. generalist and proud of my "family practice" in I.T.

I am a jack of many trades and master of some. When I am out of my depth, I know when to stop messing with something in hopes I'll stumble on a solution, and get help from a more qualified person.

While I have a certain amount of technical skill myself, most of what I do is find solutions to people's problems. I'm a librarian by trade, so I am happy at finding the answer to my customer's questions, and finding solutions to their problems, without necessarily having to know the answer myself, right off the top of my head (though I do most of the time).

Most companies in the world are small firms. Most non-profit organizations are like small firms. They can't afford an "I.T. department" headed a middle manager or CIO. Where I work, I AM the I.T. department, middle manager and CIO, yes, I run what passes for our data center, I am the help desk, and I am the de facto programmer analyst. If it plugs in the wall, I get a call. From my perspective this is not an exception, it is the rule most places that use computers.

Large I.T. shops are something of a luxury - a luxury many companies find ways to do without at the most inconvenient times. Just ask the guy who just got a pink slip or whose job was just sent overseas in a cost cutting measure.

Many IT people are more or less project managers now who can speak the language. The big projects are outsourced and the generalist is there for day-to-day maintenance and to call in the "business partners" when there's a significant problem or upgrade. This way companies do not need the experts on the payroll week in and week out, but are able to get coverage when needed.

You can argue that the rates paid to the consultants can exceed the cost of company staff, but it's in a different budget line, and headcount is one of the first things the bean counters look at when slashing. Sometimes it's a lot easier to justify (or hide) consultant fees in capital projects and expense budgets than it is to justify staffing levels.

I didn't say IT is a cost center, I said it's a DISCRETIONARY cost center. That means business has a lot of discretion when it comes to IT budgets, more so than in other departments. Cuts can be made anywhere, no one's immune. My point was IT is typically where the deepest cuts can be made.

I do see IT as a true business partner, as obviously do you. So what? Our perspective is important because it's up to you and me to sell that vision to our business partners. However, it is the perspective of those same business partners that's far more relevant. If for whatever reason THEY don't see us as business partners, then no matter how good a job we and our staffs do we'll never be anything more than order takers, the geeks in the back room who have to be tolerated so the e-mail system can keep working. The good news is that although there's still far too many organizations that don't get the true business and strategic value of IT, I really do believe the pendulum is swinging the other way. As more and more tech savvy people rise in the ranks, people who understand how to unlock the value added synergies in a truly effective business/IT collaborative relationship, we'll be taken more seriously as business partners and will in fact be welcome at any table in the whole company.

The issue of resources is also not cut and dried. The problem, once again, is that the first thing most IT managers do when their backs are to the wall is to scream they need more resources. Project teams are forever screaming they don't have enough resources. OK, fine, it's a soldier's right to complain. But we managers are kidding ourselves. Until we can demonstrably and objectively show, with absolute veracity, that more resources will solve our problems it's our responsibility to do the best we can with what we have. That's what organizations demand of all business units...why should IT be exempt?

Your second paragraph is right on and exactly my point - we're not seen as a business partner and it's OUR problem. Most of the time it is our fault because we don't communicate clearly, we don't meet deadlines, we don't hit budgets, we routinely believe that a +/- 300% LOE is okay to sign a contract on...sheer madness. To be fair there are times when management simply turns a deaf ear to us because they're ignorant, but it's safe to say that's not the preponderance of times.

I'd argue that the issue of "resources" isn't the issue. At some point it absolutely is - saying "it's what you've got that's truly important" has to assume that you have a bare minimum of resources allocated to it in the first place.

I have a friend of mine that was responsible for all IT for a 300-user base. ALL IT. This included help desk, IT procurement/negotiation, server administration (about 20 servers of various types), SQL admin, infrastructure, machine configurations/rollouts, new development, etc. ALL IT. Absolutely the issue there was resources. As it turned out, 80% of his time was spent on the help desk. If he had a resource that could handle the help desk calls (even half of them) then he'd be free to clean up the messes that he inherited and that CAUSED the help desk calls in the first place.

Davis,
http://www.my-loan-insurance.co.uk/
http://www.my-home-mortgage.co.uk/

I've spent my entire career working at manufacturing plants that are not corporate headquarters. The specialists (programming, security, WAN, testing, etc.) in the IT department are located at corporate headquaters hundreds of miles away. The plant has a couple of hundred users, large enough to require on-site support. There are many companies with this structure, and a generalist often fits the bill. It's a great improvement over answering the phones at a centralized corporate help desk.

A generalist gives the plant a front-line support person with the ability to solve many problems and the experience to determine which specialist to contact as necessary. He must be self-motivating, able to set local priorities, and able to determine when they override departmental ones. A generalist should keep the IT boss appraised of his facility's unique needs, explain technologies to the local managers, and keep the users in compliance with IT policies.

Yes, it is a "jack of all trades" position. The generalist is rarely the first to implement new technologies or play with the new toys. While the generalist is almost never the best in the department in any one field, he is often second or third best at everything. He has the advantage of seeing how all the pieces fit together. Sounds like a good step toward a management position.

That sort of autonomy scares the 19th century style management to death.

The scheduling you describe doesn't fit well into Accounting's line items.

The definition of a 'generalist' was supposed to be someone who did know a lot about a lot of 'general' things in IT. What it has evolved to is an older 'pro' who has worked with a whole lot of stuff. That kind of person is relevant and in demand. The generalist coming out of college is not, in my opinion, because I find that they do not 'know enough' to handle the varied issues that the experienced person (>10 years, more likely 15+) does.

Anyway, as training evolves to 'high levels' and teaching about the 'base' of systems declines, the experienced old generalists will become very important.

Long ago in a career far, far away, there used to be people called pipefitters, tin knockers, electricians and painters. There were carpenters, and machinists and instrument techs, too. All had their own specialty and each was seen as a "specialist" in terms of the unique skill they possessed.

Eons passed and a shift was seen, company hiring was moving from the specialist to the Maintenance Person. Someone in an HR department somewhere woke up one day and over their plate of poached eggs thought to themselves: "Instead of hiring an electrician, a painter and a carpenter, what if we just hire someone who can do all those things. A "Swiss-Army knife" type of person?".
And that is just what they did. Now look at the want ads in your city manufacturing, real estate, institutional. They all want the same thing. One person doing the work of 4 for the pay of one.

The reality is, of course, that there is no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all/one-man-army" person in any field. Anyone who claims to be that person should be approached with caution and from up-wind.

It's interesting for me to watch IT go through the same sort of evolution over the last few years. From my chair it seems to be totally cost driven just as it was in the maintenance & trades universe.

Oh, and they would like you to have 5 to 10 years experience and a Masters as well. Here's your bucket and paint brush.

Thanks,
Doug

Formerly a Chief Stationary Engineer in a big, hot, noisy power plant.
(Yeah, like Scotty on the Enterprise)

Too many people are becoming specialisedad then expecting all the problems to be as compartmentised as they are. This results in many disputes over what problems are and what is the best way to go about things.

I have seen problems bounced back and forth between spcialised areas as each claimed everything was working properly within their area and it was the other area's fault. In the end the problems get solved by a generalist who understands enough about both areas to identify that the problem is in the hand over between the two - one is sending data in one format and the other is expecting it in another; why because both have set their area up for maximum performance based on their specialised knowledge, not on what is best for the overall system.

I have also seen a manager who was a top network infrastructure fellow actually mess up a few hundred thousand dollars worth of specialised secure gateway because he did not understand the importance of having hardware that natively managed all the communications protocols used in the gateway - thus he bought some new equipment that was good for general use but required a total redesign of the gateway to allow it to be used as intended in that situation. He was good on network cables switches etc but useless on communications and protocols.

Some companies have been bitten in the pocket due to these types of problems and are now looking to have their IT run by people with a good overall knowledge and then short term hire specialists when required for specific tasks.

Even as a generalist I like my primary role to be development and all anyone seemed interested in was X yeas of .Net.

Never mind I've been developing with many languages (primarily VB) since 1995.

I keep ticking away refeshing old skills adding new variants, revisiting concepts and aboslutely refusing to be described as someone who knows nothing about anything else.
Stay away from those some companies unless you fancy a go down the consultancy route.

they aren't capable of judging the quality of your work, so they look for acronyms on your CV that match everything but their password on the Post-It next to the monitor.
Put all the buzz words you can lay claim to on there, drown the non technical in techicalities, get the interview, then you normally get the oportunity to talk to somene with at least some knowledge of IT.
These pratts are just a hoop we have to jump through to get to the starting blocks.

I manage a small IT Team and have to employ generalists to get enough spread of skills to manage all the technologies we support and use consultants for things outside of our skillbase.

If an organisation has a large IT Department then they will employ specialists as the technoology they manage is usually more complex and downtime is more expensive.

From a personal perspective if you want to play with lots of toys be a generalist if you want to get serious about technology become a specialist.

Or if your interested in technology and just want to dabble be an IT Manager :o)

The issue is that the world gets more and more complex and the ability of people to be specialists in everything is limited.

Generalists are needed for broader strategic and big picture items - specialists for specific purposes. It may be argued specialists are exceptional at what they do, but can be restricted in generalist skills such as people management, politics, networking and broad planning. Generalists can similarly be restricted in the specialist skills. One is not better than the other - both are necessary. The problem occurs when a generalist is sort for a specialist role and vice versa.

It is my opinion that we are seeing a decline in the quality of senior management and talent management is suffering as a result ? specifically the ability to communicate business needs to technical staff appears to be worsening rather than improving even with the recent experiences.

I am sorry that you have met with such difficulties.
Maybe you should go to Sweden, where highly educated Generalists like myself can go un-employed for years, but Specialists are recruited per day.
Maybe I should have gone to where you are? (I am employed now ;-)

I am now a retired IT person who entered the career in the mid 1980s. I am now a "semi-retired" librarian at a small college and much saner.

When I got into IT in the early 80s I was a Cobol Programmer with one mainframe program to maintain. By the time I retired in 2000 I was an "object librarian/DBA" on a Powerbuilder/Oracle project, on-call and going crazy.

Will not go back to that.

I've enjoyed this thread more than any in a long time.

Myself, I moved from a branch manager position into "IT Manager", with very little computer knowledge.

So now, I'm the generalist IT guy, no programming ability, PC Tech, help desk, jackleg security guy (helped by a healthy dose of paranoia), webmaster, and a skilled search engine optimizer.

In my spare time, I'm overseeing a software conversion and data mapping, training recruiters, and doing just a touch of recruiting and relationship building/online networking and planning future online ventures for the company....

Does that make me one of those generalist kind of people? LOL

y'all have a good day.

Jon

My what greedy little bastards we have become. More with less...I feel it all the time. Hey, I'm a big person but not some super being. Screw the mentality. What happened to customer service and satisfaction. Big corporate types will try to make you believe customer satisfaction is what the company is all about...a big lie. The company is about $$$ and satisfaction of stock holders.
Ultimately the customer suffers with resulting delayed response to critical situations and poor service. Screw the bean counters and the social butterflies within the ranks.

Okay, I'm an optimist. And I went independent in 1993 after five years of desktop support and microcomputer management.

But I think that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. And the more we know what we're good at and what we want to do, the better we'll be able to move up in a career.

I don't mean you have to be a specialist. If what you love is being a generalist, then go for it.

Success is achieved by adding value. To succeed in a job, we need to maximize value for two--for ourselves, and for our employer.

Value for ourselves includes our paycheck. I suggest it should also include something between an acceptable job and a rewarding career. (Which one is your choice--how important is your job in your life?)

Value to the company (or organization) comes from understanding what the company needs. And that does require good communictions skills, as many have mentioned. It helps to understand the industry or agency you are a part of. And, if you don't like your job, to understand how other industries work, as well.

For some people, it is crucial to do what we love, and we have to carve out a niche, either through career development, or through going out on our own and then marketing what we do.

For others, we're more willing to do what others want in return for a paycheck.

But note--in both cases, understanding what others want is crucial. I recommend getting past job titles and looking at functional roles and work processes.

You might also consider self-evaluation for personality preferences or skills.

My suggestion, figure out what you want to do, and then find someone who will pay you to do it.

I've been reading a lot of articles lately on the burnout rate increasing for IT professionals. Looking back at my 20 years in this field, I've had to learn most of what I do on my own without formal training (lack of training budget) and have done everything from systems analysis & design, programming, database design, network installation & maintenance, configuring & maintaining servers, firewalls, routers, PC & printer maintenance, and many "other duties as assigned".
I've found that being in this field is a never ending learning curve causing me to put in many extra hours at night and on weekends either learning new technologies or doing work that there just isn't enough time to do during the normal 8-5 work day.
Is it any wonder that so many of our peers are going through burnout? A life? What's that?

Bottom line. The avereage IT/IS expert is still unable to communicate what it is that they do for their company. A generalist can come in and communicate with your management better and get the job but may not do the job as well as the expert.

A lot C-Level Management DOES NOT understand all of the terminnology that this "expert" throws at them. The IT/IS expert DOES NOT understand the functional terminology thrown at them from various areas of the organization.

The generalist demonstrates the ability to step outside of his/her box and communicate in areas that he/she is not an expert in themselves.

The gemeralist is better at acting as a liaison between IT/IS and the rest of the company. They tend to communicate in terms that are easier for non techies to understand.

Mind you, there is still a place for the focused expert but more often than not a translator is required.

Gartner has a term they use called Versatilist - where a person's prior roles, assignments and experiences create knowledge and context and add business value. This is uniquely different than a genealist or specialist. A versatilist is neither, but yet a little of both.
This seems to apply well to much of the IT organizational change in progress - particularly as the nature of IT, and the value that IT brings, shifts to a more business value focus. AND as the inevitable outsourcing/offshoring activities increase - questioning the core value that IT brings to a company. IT does not bring developers and network specialists, etc as the core value proposition - it brings business value through the creative coordination of those roles.
A versatilist is a necessary capability, or role, in today's IT.

... despite the fact that it is a true story, and I have learned in a veeery hard way that it doesn't matter at all (and if it matters one day, then it is too late for the victims).
Here is the one fragment of my life (the latest one)

Non-IT and semi-IT people have a very generalized idea of IT job. In my case, 4 years ago I got the job at Infineon as "IT". That was a title. And I worked exactly that - everything concerning IT:
- Network administration
- DB system development and administration
- programming (VBA, C++, LabVIEW, SCPI) the measurement devices, data analysis, report generation
- HW reparement, configuration, reconfiguration
- HW/SW ordrering, taking care of lincenses, inventarizing equipment,
- you name it
And I tried and tried to explain that we need more people, but it was "not right time", "no money", ... , and I managed somehow to do everything, working and learning 10-11 hours a day and at least one day of the weekend.
Then we were acquired from another company.
And one day, my new CEO came, asking me how is it going and asking me "why we have to hire external IT support to configure our Cisco router and e-mail server (Debian-Linux)", and that I should learn to do it myself "in my free time", and that by "looking what are those guys doing and then next time do it myself". "At the end", he concluded "it is always some stupid command you have to type in".
"Why and for what money?" you may ask. Because I come from a country destroyed by those who "know the best what are the human rights" and who lied terribly about everything concerning the situation and events there, and I have a wife and two beatiful little doughters to whom I wanted to provide nice life that I once, as a boy, had in that country.That was Yugoslavia, by the way, and I am "Serbus terribilus".
And, at the end, we made a good product (ROADM), tested it, and the bigger company came, bought the know-how and closed us. Without any compensation, because it would be the same amount needed to hire a lawyer to get it.
I love kapitalizm ;)

This seems to be the way of the future specially if you work for a small shop. I am the resident Backup & Recovery expert/Intrusion Detection Expert/ and head of Research & Development in my department.

I work for a large university and since they can't afford to pay (will not pay) to have experts in each field I am more than willing to take on multiple roles and when I am comfortable enough with each field I pick what I want to be when I grow up and make the money in specializing at a diffrent job.

I would not get the opportunity to do the things I do around, I can't complain about it. Besides I get the training I as for...can't beat that.

I've been a JOAT all of my life. I may not be as academically challenged (college degree) as my peers, but I am the one called on to fix the problems no one else can figure out. Not because I have extensive knowledge, but because I am not afraid to dive into, explore and learn new skills and tools. Where the academically challenged IT people say "It's not my job." or "I don't do that." JOATs say "How soon do you you need it fixed?". And then the JOAT start searching for the solution.

Computers and JOATs just seem to go together. It's not just the ability to fix things that is great, it is also the drive to constantly learn about other things and processes that makes a JOAT valuable. The first computer companies, other than IBM, were started by JOAT's.

In the U.S. Air Force we had a training program called "CUT", Cross Utilization Training, which had different career fields learning how to do other critical career field tasks. Not only did it provide a back-up for combat situations it allowed for a closer knit team to accomplish the Unit's Goals.

It never hurts to broaden your experiences and skills. When you learn what someone else has to do to accomplish their work it gives you a whole new perspective on what actions you need to take to help reach your corporations goals and to further your own career.

I've worked wioth a lot of folks looking for work in IT. The general trend is "When you are too specialised, generalise. When you are too generalised, specialise."

Think Darwinism, and think about adaptation. A generalist is very versatile but has a hard time excelling. A specialist excels when the conditions are right, but sacrifices adaptability in the process. If the conditions change they could quickly have painted themselves into a corner.

I suppose in the end a lot depends on what you specialise as. If it is an area set to take off (read: do your research), you could stand to do well for yourself, however keep in mind that all things change. Have a contingecy plan in place that will help you adapt to the comming change.

I work for State Government and we are experience moving in the opposite direction. We are gathering the resources from agencies statewide and pooling these resources in defined functions. We are not only standardizing the hardware and software, but people are being categorized and placed in specialized categories according to function. Some of our groups will be e-mail, Windows administration, Unix administration, Database Administration etc. These people will then perform that function.
It seems to me that human nature is to look for the one solution that solves all problems. When we stop and think about it don't we need both generalists and specialists. I see the sliding scale going from generalist in small organizations to very specialized in very large organizations.
Either approach that is taken brings with it it's own set of problems that need to be dealt with. Eamples might be,in a small organization trying to hire specialist for each IT function would be costly. Or in a large organization having a large number of generalists is probably going to be costly in duplicated efforts and added expense of getting different technologys to work together.
So to the original poster. Are you looking in the right places to utilize your speciality skills? There are a lot of companies out there subscribibg to the specialized approach to IT.

One thing that amazes me is how narrowly focused people (headhunters, HR, Management) seem to be at hiring time. Not only do they want you to have expertise with their product, they want a particular version. I'm sorry, but at the speed things change in IT, what is important is if a person stays current with technology as a habit. Can they learn the needed technology. Amazingly, they don't seem at all concerned with breadth of knowledge and experience, which from my perspective (work) tends to be critically important.
I tend to work in smaller shops where I am the system, database and development department. Does anyone ask me if I can do that when hired? No. They tend to have no idea what I can do.
Frankly, my experience does not lead me to warm fuzzies about being hired. I assume that they are not going to communicate what they need.
The amazing thing is that I tell them that much of my job is research and they hate that. Basically, I feel that most (not all) employers hate their IT departments because they don't understand what or how they do things, it is extremely labor intensive and it is necessary. I may not like the constant pace of change and my managers like it less.
Enjoy, Mike Breeden
.
.... I wrote sort of a Fear and Loathing in IT essay. Here is the start of it. I hope it amuses.
.

Who am I? I'm the Tech Man. I build it all for you.
My first PC came with only a floppy.
I was there when Jugi Tandon was making the first 5 Meg Hard Drives in Chatsworth and then the 10 Meg Winchester.
I was there in the Silicon Valley when it grew.
I was there to build Apple, Maxtor, Tandem, Ampex, Seagate,

I've been hit by 220 volts when putting together the Apple Building in Milpitas
and I've been gaffed by CPU pins while doing PC testing at XXCAL in Santa Monica.
You could say I've had close relations with hardware.

Hardware is my friend, but I didn't neglect software.
I wrote my first c programs on a CPM machine and then sent my them to a PDP machine at JPL to be compiled. ... Was it THAT PDP machine? I don't know.
I programmed the Windows API... for OS2. I liked ATT Unix better than SCO XENIX 286.
I learned C++ and grocked the Tau of OOPs. Then I networked it all.
In 5 years, I architected, designed and wrote two Enterprise class software projects in San Diego.
I was a follower of Bjorn Heisner at Borland. He made the Builder from COM. He built Microsoft .NET from COM as well, so I followed him to that vision.
I first learned VB.NET to do something that was not not C. Then ASP for where computers be. XML, well XML.
I have other essential IT skills.
I keep my tongue still.
I can beg and flatter until tech support will help me with any problem or else I just wear them down.
I can understand your business.

I'm going into my sixth year working IT in the academia; two state schools that (one I graduated from and one I currently attended) and one private college. At the college I'm currently at (the private college) I am the "jack of all..." here. The division I work in has no IS department. And the college as a whole has a very small IS department.

I bring a wealth of knowledge and experience, moreso than everyone combined, even though I'm younger and haven't been in IT as long. But am I fully utilized....NOPE!!

I couldn't agree more with mitchir because todays IT is exactly that... there are no more singular departments. Every department, within reason of course, are intertwined together, and these days you have to have at least a basic understanding of, for example, how compliance to Fed Regs such as SOX, HIPAA, etc. affect the company. I'm keeping this very simplified and short but I'm sure everyone here can figure out what I mean.

I can't remember if what I read was in regards to ISO 17799, ITIL, or whatever, but no matter, the point driven home was that it's the business that drives IT, not the other way around and one would be wise to have some background or at least understanding of more than just ones own singular specialty. May not be fun! But a fact of IT life now :(