🤝 The Economy of Specialization
👋 Intro note
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🤷♂️ How niche is too niche?
Last week I ranted a bit on Twitter about how people seem to unfairly hate on Ruby on Rails (for those not familiar, it's a tool for creating web apps). By the end of the thread, I realized that I was more interested in the concept of specialization.
People complaining about Ruby (the programming language) often call out that not a lot of jobs are out there for Ruby developers. I don't this is exactly true, but even if it is, I don't think that's a problem.
I mean, yes you want to be able to find a job, but specialization is something that all of us do to one degree or another?
👔 Why even have a job?
Let's go back a few thousand years (or even a few hundred, depending on where you are in the world). Very few of us have a 'job'. Most people are pretty self-sufficient, fending for their own food, building their own shelter, and protecting what's theirs. It's the pinnacle of not being specialized. People weren't often phenomenal at any one thing. Nobody had a job.
But when people focus on what they're good at or at least focus enough to get good at something, everyone can benefit. You'd probably die of hunger if all you did was build houses - but if you built houses for people who were good at growing food, everybody wins.
This is pretty generic, but it really got me thinking. Software development in general is a specialization. But you can specialize even further if you want.
💰 More money or more options
Generally, the more specialized you are at your craft, the harder it is to find work. But on the flip side, you'll probably make more money. Specializing is a choice that limits some options in order to gain more money for your efforts. If you want to specialize in a certain programming language, I don't think anything is stopping you. I mean, people are still getting paid (well) to write COBOL.
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