Is it better to go vertical or horizontal?

In my career I have noticed that people who specialize in one thing seem to really go in deep do very well. That's not to say you can't do that by learning a ton of different skills, but this has just been my observation. Now obviously this is very subjective. I don't want to come across that if you master powerpoint only you will make huge coin. However if you narrow your scope and dive deep, it seems these people generally move up faster. Again this has been my observation.

I am curious to your thoughts on this take?

I'll be honest I think going vertical is the way to go and if asked that's the direction I always give. Wrong or right that's what I believe in. But I understand that has is flaws as well.

I really look forward to your responses. As always this is a great forum with a lot of good insight.

My example is this.

A+, Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 or N+, CCENT, CCNA

is >

A+, S+, N + or A+, CCENT, ITIL

Generally speaking.

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Comments

Psoasman

Interesting question. I tend to look at it as wide to narrow. When starting out in IT, there is a wide field available for them to choose. After getting some experience, I've seen most people who've been in IT for a while, start to specialize.

N2IT

That's a good point.

But what about the IT professional that knows his passion from day one. Does he have a distinct advantage over the guy starting wide?

Xyro

N2IT wrote: »

But what about the IT professional that knows his passion from day one. Does he have a distinct advantage over the guy starting wide?

So many variables can be thrown into this but considering all subjects to be of equal advantage, effort, & intelligence - then yes, he does because just as in any field it gives 1 a "head start".

Success is all about time. The more efficiently time is spent, the greater the success.

Complete_IT_Professional

Generally yes, the specialised roles get paid more. Also, larger companies usually look for specialised roles and smaller companies look for more general roles.
Most people end up becoming specialists - how often do you meet people who are experts in software development, network support and administration? Just an example but you know what I mean.

Psoasman

N2IT wrote: »

That's a good point.

But what about the IT professional that knows his passion from day one. Does he have a distinct advantage over the guy starting wide?

It does help to know what you want to do. However, you may not be able to right away. For example, if you have a person with no IT experience, no degree, no certs, who wants to be a senior security administrator, that person is going to have to put in a lot of time to get there. They will likely start at Help Desk / Desktop support, which may be a wider range. As they gain experience and education, that range will likely narrow down.

crypticgeek

N2IT wrote: »

That's a good point.

But what about the IT professional that knows his passion from day one. Does he have a distinct advantage over the guy starting wide?

Not necessarily. Everyone must start off wide regardless. You can't really just jump into a specialization of any kind. There will always be foundational knowledge that covers a number of areas prior to becoming specialized. You don't go get your PhD or Master's without having gotten a Bachelor's degree first. This is a poor analogy really, but illustrates the basic point. Of course, then you start to specialize. No one stays a generalist forever unless they stay at the bottom on their career ladder.

dave330i

N2IT wrote: »

That's a good point.

But what about the IT professional that knows his passion from day one. Does he have a distinct advantage over the guy starting wide?

You also need drive and a plan.

NetworkVeteran

N2IT wrote: »

But what about the IT professional that knows his passion from day one. Does he have a distinct advantage over the guy starting wide?

Sure! I never studied for my A+, repaired PCs, nor meddled with Active Directory professionally. Knowing that I wanted to be focused on the networking side of things helped me avoid going too wide and taking on unrelated jobs. (One thing univerisites are great for is exposing you to a wide range of possibilites, so you can find those that you enjoy most.)

Now, I agree in most cases you can't be a good specialist without building a broader foundation first. For example, an MPLS specialist also requires a strong understanding of BGP and some knowledge of IGPs. Knowing about web development or Active Directory, however, is completely unnecessary. Someone could use this info to select ideal college courses, certifications, and stepping-stone jobs that fill-in the related topics to lead them to their specialist role of choice.

A word of warning--I would't take this too far. Be cautious of making detailed plans more than five years in advance. When I went to college, the MPLS RFC hadn't even been published yet! I certainly didn't forsee that role as a possibility. Spouses, children, and personal growth also tend to impact our goals and priorities in unexpected ways!

ptilsen

I agree with NetworkVeteran here. While there can be lots of value in generalizing, I think getting side-tracked from goals is a mistake. While I keep saying I'd like to have my CCNA, the truth it I haven't made it a priority because most of the material is just not relevant to my job or career, and what is relevant I already know. Similarly, a network engineer is probably distracting him or herself from CCNP/CCIE studies by looking at MCSA, or MCSE. Now there are definitely positions and career paths that can use both skills at that level, but people who know they want to specialize in one area should go for that.

As far as certification in particular, I see very little value in certifying skills that aren't in your plan. Having wide, high-level knowledge is good (think CISSP), but have wide, deep knowledge can be an arduous process for relatively little gain -- assuming you ever achieve deep knowledge going down this route. You don't see MCM/CCIE combos, and you don't see MCSE/CCNPs combo engineers out-earning CCIEs. So at the very least, there is a limit to how deep most people can realistically go in multiple distinct areas.

I've dithered quite a bit on this myself, and gone back and forth on where I should go and how to get there. I've been very successful despite it, but I think I would have gone even further if I'd picked something more specific and driven hard for it.

blargoe

I'm more than 12 years into this IT thing, and I still haven't managed to specialize. I have narrowed my focus quite a bit and filtered out some of the "noise" from past jack-of-all admin positions, but I'm still not specialized, unless you consider "infrastructure" a specialization. If you held a gun to my head and made me narrow my scope down to a more specialized role, I'm not sure if I could pick one.

In a way, I like it that way. I like the variety. There are certain adjacencies in the some of the areas that I do manage, for example virtualization and storage are complimentary skillsets.

On the other hand, I know I could really excel in a specific area if I chose to narrow my scope. There are Microsoft specific things that I used to know like the back of my hand, that I just don't have room for anymore, and as I grow in certain areas, I won't have room to be as effective in other areas.

About7Narwhal

I have always thought of my IT career as something similar to a Doctor's career. You start with the basics, covering a wide range of topics that are all considered IT. Once the foundations are there, you start to move into a more specific topic: Say Windows Admin as an example. While you delve deeper into the focus you have chosen, you also need to build on some other topics to further understand what you enjoy: like Networking.

The end result looks similar to a pyramid where you have a wider base and a pointed top: Basic knowledge of a wide range of topics, a more focused range of intermediate knowledge on things like Security and Networking, and an advanced knowledge of your core focus: Windows Administration.

That is how I view my future path anyway.

gbdavidx

I've seen poeple dive right into CCNA, I have a couple years on the desktop side, now at a service desk, and going straight into CCNA (ccent first)

jasong318

Speaking from the security side of things, you kind of have to be a 'jack of all trades', meaning that you have to know a little bit of everything. I have to know networking, exploit development, scripting/programming, DB, etc. I like to think that being broad in my knowledge makes me more marketable, but then again, I haven't strayed from infosec very much

Priston

It's good to build a strong foundation first. Having a CCIE won't help you if you can't troubleshoot something as simple as a cable being unplugged or bad.

Also some job roles require you to know multiple technologies (Jack of all trades) and other job roles require you to know a more narrow scope of technologies inside and out.

paul78

blargoe wrote: »

I'm more than 12 years into this IT thing, and I still haven't managed to specialize.

Similar to blargoe, I fall into the same camp. I've been in IT about 25 years but I wouldn't necessarily say that I am a specialist in anything.

blargoe wrote: »

However if you narrow your scope and dive deep, it seems these people generally move up faster.

I think that it largely depends on your end-goal and I don't necessarily mean some position or role that you want to target. But more of a life-style choice and where you may want to be in 20 or 40 years. My own goal was to be primarily to be in IT but I really did want to grow and build companies. Ultimately, I do want the "huge coin" that you mentioned - in reality to be independent if I could.

My own career started as a specialist and has grown into a generalist IT role. And my path has served me very well. If anything, I plan to expand my experience into more general non-IT areas.

I started my career as a software engineer - programming Windows applications. From there, I started to generalize, first I expanded into Windows libraries. My next job was sales support, primarily phone support (that was a blast). In that same job, I started to write database applications (basically a knowledge base application).

After that stint in sales - I went back into programming but I stayed away from Microsoft desktop software so I could generalize some more and gain experience with other OS's. I spent a few years writing system-level software for UNIX and VMS mainframes. And I also had a few assignments on embedded systems.

During the dot-com boom, I left to work on work web applications, but I started working more with infrastructure - mostly general Windows server administration and basic networking. At the same company, I also spend some time managing infrastructure and operations support.

When the dot-com bubble bust, I went into consulting, mostly working short gigs - sometimes it was database architecture (designing schema's and flows), to network management, to IT management consulting (putting together IT business plans, etc.), to even setting up hosting services.

The constant consulting race started to get a bit stressful so I ended taking a partnership position which was mostly a jack-of-all-trades role for a small MSP doing everything from network admin, server admin, software architecture, and post-sale implementation. It was fun but not as lucrative as I had hope so when I had the opportunity to join a small start-up, I jumped.

At the new start-up, I ran just about everything that wasn't related to software development and product management - that included facilities, infrastructure engineering, operations, customer support, etc. etc. It was a very stressful job but that goes with the territory of a small company. We were very close-knit and we all had a lot of fun.

Our start-up was quite successful and we were able to sell it. The acquiring company made me an offer which I couldn't refuse. So I am still here. At my current employer, I basically continue to be a IT management jack-of-all-trades. I do have specific responsibilities - but for the most part, my job is to help move our line-of-business forward.

As I look back on my career - and as I look forward to the rest of my career. I don't think that I would be as successful (by my own standard anyways

) as I am today if I had limited my IT knowledge to a select specialty.

jdballinger

When the Valve internal employee manual was leaked last year, I read through it in its entirety. One thing that I came across really stuck with me, and I have patterned my goals after it.

The manual said that Valve likes their employees to be 'T' shaped, meaning that they are very broad in knowledge, but each person has that one area where they go really deep, thus forming the T. I like this because I have always been driven to learn as much as possible about the widest variety of subjects (this isn't limited to IT either.) This 'T' concept allows me the freedom to study whatever I want, but gives me the benefit of being able to truly specialize and become an expert in the subject I'm most passionate about.

Now actually putting this concept into practice is another matter, and it can be very tiring at times (I don't get much sleep anymore, mostly due to being busy pursuing knowledge of one thing or another.) For instance I'm currently working towards my degree at WGU, so I'm knee-deep in Microsoft certification studies. I'm also pursuing my CCNP, which is where my real interest lies, and at the same time I'm trying desperately to get my head around VoIP, as I'm up to my elbows in phones at my new job.

I like the concept though

010101

My vote is to go horizontal for quite a while.
1. It offers you more oportunities down the road. Imagine being a guy who was an EXPERT at Novell in the 90s and knew nothing else. Not fun.
2. I meet a lot of consultants who are experts on something like Cisco Call Manager, but have no clue how to navigate Exchange to fully do their job when something doesn't go 100% to plan.

The question in my mind is when to specialize, AND/OR can you both specialize and stay general?

petedude

paul78 wrote: »

Similar to blargoe, I fall into the same camp. I've been in IT about 25 years but I wouldn't necessarily say that I am a specialist in anything.

I've been in IT about that long as well, and things have changed so rapidly that it's been tough to really grab onto a specialty. I think we're headed into another period where it may get worse-- the technology "churn" where newer and "different-er" things are becoming key, and making it tough to be an expert in any given area. There have been all too many periods where it didn't pay to specialize past a certain point.. . if you were a NetWare or Vines guru, now you're obsolete. There are only a few Cobol jobs left, even with all the crowing about the last expert programmers retiring. Same could happen to Java programmers-- I'm scared that with all the security panic, companies might start ditching Java in droves thus making those WGU classes a bit less useful.

Anyway, I'm facing a similar dilemma to what the OP poses. Do I dig into specialties? I used to program, and there are days I think I'd like to mess with that again. Conversely, I have other broad skills I'd like to throw at leadership roles. I spent a fair number of years in networking-- should I go back into that?

I think part of my dilemma is that offerings have been so picky that if you don't have exactly X skill, no one will talk to you.

010101

^^^ Yeah, when you think of it, there's a lot of churn.
Think Exchange gurus. Exchange will be gone in 5 years in most companies I think.
I wouldn't be surprised to see VOIP follow exchange.

Part of the decision to specialize to a great deal depends on where you want to work.
Do you want to work for a medium size company and do everything, or a large company and specialize, or consult and specialize.

.

the_Grinch

Honestly, I think everyone starts wide. Most people tend to have an idea of where they want to end up, but I find it is rare that someone directly enters this field doing any specialization. You might want to do networking, but you will probably end up on a helpdesk first doing everything. Plus I think you'll find it is wiser to be open minded initially with what you want to do. So many things you could do in this field and until you touch it I don't think you can truly know what path you'll want to take.

ptilsen

010101 wrote: »

Think Exchange gurus. Exchange will be gone in 5 years in most companies I think.
I wouldn't be surprised to see VOIP follow exchange.

Where do you get this? I see Exchange leaving SMBs, since MS killed SBS and is pushing Office 365/Outlook.com/Azure. But I haven't seen anything to indicate larger companies are leaving Exchange.

As far as specializing, I should add that I think people are generally better to specialize in certain areas, rather than in specific technologies. That is not to say there is no market for Exchange and Active Director masters, for example, but I think most of us are better off specializing in a broader area than that, say Microsoft server platform. CCIE, for example, is actually a broader specialization than MCM/MCSM. Specializing in routing and switching is not nearly as deep and narrow as Exchange. Again, both are valid career paths, but I think the majority of us are better off picking a broader area, such as routing and switching or Linux, and delving deep into that. I also get that from the Valve handbook. They want people to be experts in their area, but be versatile and able to do other things.

That being said, I think even a deep specialization should be built on a broad, if shallow understanding of technology. That means we should all have at least a certain foundation -- OSI layer; hardware components; basics of each OS group; how DNS, HTTP, IP, and TCP work.

Petedude has a valid point. Get too specialized, and you're kind of stuck. Either you do basically the same thing, or you have to take a big step back if your specialization becomes obsolete or over-saturated. That goes back to having a broad base, though. I'm fairly specialized into Microsoft platforms, but I feel I've got easily broad enough knowledge that I could become a competent Linux or networking professional in short order, if I had to. It's about balancing that kind of versatility with what you really want to take a deep dive in and what will pay the most.

N2IT

I really think it comes down to if you are risk averse or not. I am not usually so I tend to put all my eggs in one basket. My mother who is in her 60's still develops COBOL programs. She does some Shell / J scripting and some VBA in Access (generate automated reporting). But her bread and butter is COBOL programming. She has been doing it for years and still get's mid 6 figure offers to work on maintance projects. If you know anything about those you literally have 60-80% downtime. But in case that 20% happens they need someone there or operations stops. It great money and it works for her.

I'll take a risk if the gain is worth it to me. Even if it means being unemployed or homeless. I am just like that, I usually have contigencies so that won't happen but I think you get my point.

I heard this saying once and I really held on to it. " Be the best at anything in the world and you will be a millionaire"

Best pool player, swimmer, programmer, etc doesn't matter you'll be loaded just ask Tiger Woods or Bill Gates. It's a matter of fact - swinging from one tree to the next isn't going to bring in the money like having laser focus.

shodown

I'm pretty much all in on Cisco Voice at this point. I use to be pretty good with WAN/BGP type stuff, now I would be laughed out a room with the men and women who do that stuff as there main gig. The benefits of me doing this has been a 4x increase in salary. The other benefit have been that when I have to dabble in other Voice platforms the jump hasn't been that hard. I can hold my own after a few weeks on most other voice platforms as they all use SIP, H323.

SteveO86

That a tough question to answer.

When I started out like many others I got the following:

A+, N+, MCSA, CCNA. Which I think is a good philosophy since you get exposure to desktop, servers, and network.

As the years went on I added a few certs:

Server+, Security+, MCITP, CCNP, BlackBerry certs, CWTS, still keeping my subject level pretty broad.

Then as I found Cisco/Networking to be pretty easy I jumped forward with that, adding:

CCDP, CCIP, CCNA:Wireless/Security.

However where do we define this 'specialization' ?? I like to think I'm a network guy however when you look at what a typical 'network guy' deals with:

Cisco/Juniper - Networking Devices
SonicWalls/Fortinets -All-in-one boxes??
IPS - A network device because it 'deals with packets and is inline' but also a security device.
Load Balancers - I know you can get lost real quick with F5's. However depending where you are and who you talk this can be managed by either server or network teams.
Wireless - You can make a whole career out of this.
Voice - This can also be a full time job however at smaller places this typically falls under the 'network team'
Design - Something that doesn't get thought of often a scalable, highly available, resilient design that will be followed for years to come.

Plus I'm sure it's probably worse with server guys, Microsoft (Exchange, Active Directory, Lync) *Nix guys and all the different applications they manage.

So how deep do we consider this 'specialization' concept? I'd consider myself a 'network guy' but I don't think I'll go further. I can still specialize further within the networking role and go deeper in the rabbit hole but I just need to know it's going to be worth it. However I am dead set on my CCIE: R/S. I don't consider CCIE: R/S to be a specialization since it's just the core/basics of networking (from a routing protocol/switching perspective)

N2IT

@SteveO86

I think shodown has the idea. See his thread I think that best captures the term specialization at least to me.

SteveO86

N2IT wrote: »

@SteveO86

I think shodown has the idea. See his thread I think that best captures the term specialization at least to me.

Agreed, I think I was typing my post as his was published. It took more then 2 minutes to type that

paul78

I was musing over this topic today. My observation is that over the course of a long IT career, I imagine that at a macro-level, the specialization and generalization looks more like a bell shape where someone may start off broadly, then start to specialize, but as their career progresses would start to widen again.

But if you look at the bell shape closely, it will probably look more like a series of peaks and valleys as technology and individual interests and opportunities change, the individual will move to specialize from area to area, eventually having a generalized knowledge in many areas.

With most the IT professionals that I know at my age level, I cannot think of anyone that doesn't have a varied list of previous technologies that they used to be immersed in.

There is a right time to be narrow and a right time to move on to another area. It all depends on where you are on your career path.

I often read on these forums about advice that to increase compensation, an individual has to narrow their field of expertise and go deeper. That could be true at some point in a career path. But it's more likely to be untrue, if someone has aspirations to reach senior IT management or C-suite. At those levels, a broader understanding of IT is more likely to be desirable.

z3r0cool

I like to think of the medical industry when it comes to this topic. A neuro-surgeon makes more than your family physician for a very good reason.

paul78

If you look at the spectrum of jobs in IT versus medicine, I am not sure its a good analogy. While a neuro-surgeon's average compensation may be higher than the salary of their Chief Medical Officer (based on what I see on salary.com), you are highly unlikely to find a CCIE or whatever toplevel IT specialist that has a compensation level that is higher than their CIO.

z3r0cool

Are we not talking about generalization vs. specialization?

I fail to see how your example relates to the one I provided.