The job market loves to debate specialist versus generalist. Which career path is better? Which one gets paid more? Which one is safer?

Here’s the truth: both paths work. Both have trade-offs. And neither determines your future as much as two things that have nothing to do with your job title.

But first — it’s worth understanding which path you’re on, because it shapes where you fit.

The Specialist

A clear, consistent thread runs through their career. One domain, deepened over time.

Specialists are highly sought after by enterprises and scale-ups that need a specific skill to build product, gain market share, or backfill a seat. When the market is hiring in their niche, they know it before anyone else. Recruiters come to them.

The trade-off: when the market slows or the niche narrows, options narrow with it. Their competition for any role looks exactly like them on paper. To command a premium, they don’t just need to be good — they need to be the best in their field.

The Generalist

Our definition of a generalist isn’t just someone who does everything. They’re also someone who has intentionally built adjacent skills within their domain over time — and that breadth becomes their edge.

A sales professional who has sold SaaS, consulting, and financial products. A marketer across brand, performance, and SEO. An HR leader spanning compensation, HRBP, talent acquisition, and organisational development. The path isn’t linear, but it’s intentional.

Generalists thrive in start-ups that need range, in large organisations with strategy or chief of staff roles where perspective matters more than a single skill, and at the C-suite level where breadth plus depth is the job.

The trade-off: generalists can struggle to get through the door for specialist roles — because the brief was written for a specialist. And vice versa.

Neither is better. They’re just built for different things.

Before your next job search, ask yourself honestly: which one am I building?

Now, the two things that actually determine your future.

Here’s what doesn’t change regardless of which path you’re on, which industry you’re in, or how much the job market shifts.

1. Human skills

Every strong employer — startup, enterprise, or anything in between — is ultimately hiring the person, not just the profile. The traits they’re looking for:

• Integrity
• Clear communication — in writing, in person, in how you listen.
• Emotional intelligence — the ability to genuinely connect with customers, colleagues, vendors etc.
• Collaborative mindset — team over individual.
• Problem-solving — not just flagging issues, but working through them.
• Growth mindset — always learning, always improving
• Openness to feedback — and the ability to receive and give it without being harsh about it.

These are the hardest things to teach — and the first things employers notice.

The good news: you already have these skills. The question is whether you’re developing them with the same intentionality you bring to your craft.

2. AI fluency

This is the new one — and it’s moving faster than most people are comfortable admitting.

AI fluency isn’t about being a developer or a data scientist. It’s about understanding how to work alongside AI tools to do your job better, faster, and with more leverage. It’s already a baseline expectation in some functions like engineering and data. It won’t be long before it’s expected across all of them — sales, marketing, HR, finance, operations, you name it.

The people who embrace it now won’t just be more productive. They’ll be the ones defining what good looks like in their field.

I’ll go deeper on AI fluency in a future post. But for now: start. Pick up a tool. Experiment. Get comfortable with being a beginner again.

 

Signing off from a cosy café in Hanoi.