Jack of All Trades, Master of None

I’ve always envied people with a singular focus and the drive that comes with that. I have, on the other hand, suffered from a multitude of interests, or at least curiosities, and insufficient time to pursue them all. So, the title overstates my ability because I’m by no means a Jack of All Trades, but I know a little bit about a pretty decent range of things and it’s certainly true I’m a Master of None!

Once upon a time, before I became self-aware enough to have my own opinion, my parents thought I’d make a good lawyer. I’ve no idea why but since I didn’t have a better plan I went along with it and was completely comfortable in my ability to do that if I wanted to. And, having met a number of lawyers (measured at least in the high single digits), I do believe I could have been successful in that profession if I’d cared enough to pursue it. There’s no magic there, just a good amount of work – as in any profession.

But since that wasn’t my goal, once I had my own, I dropped that one like a hot potato. In fact, my best friend and I were in a mock court in high school playing the role of the lawyers representing a company in a job discrimination claim brought by a short lady who believed that the company didn’t make enough concessions for her to be successful. We lost. At the end, the judge asked the courtroom, filled with other fake lawyers from other schools who there had an interest in the law and my buddy and I, who each had other plans by that time in our lives, were the only ones to not raise our hands which was met with a fair bit of laughter since we’d just lost our case.

No, my heart was always in computers and programming and software. And I still love that despite my move in the last 10 or more years in to management as my focus.

I’ve settled in to what is typically called “Middle Management” or first level management. I like working with groups of developers and I report in to a Director or Senior Manager or sometimes VP of Engineering or Software. There was a time when I was still actively trying to figure out how high that ladder I would climb, but the longer I do this, the more I come to feel that where I am actually suits me pretty well. I enjoyed being a Developer but felt like my individual ability to affect the larger organization was very limited. As I got exposed to other opportunities and positions, everything from Customer Application Engineering to Technical Marketing to a variety of leadership roles, I came to realize that I like working with teams to solve larger problems.

A Developer has a limited but very direct impact in terms of what they can accomplish. They do it with their own hands, but what they can do is limited by how much a single person can do. A manager steps back and works remotely through and with his team so he (or she, don’t hold it against me, I’m writing from my perspective) isn’t actively involved in the day-to-day coding as much or possibly at all, but his ability to get things done is now magnified by the size of the group he works with. So, greater ability to get things done is traded for reduced ability to point at the result knowing what you did to get it done. You are an influencer instead of a doer. The other thing that comes with taking that step to management is that you start to influence across groups which now means you can help coordinate not only what you can affect with the immediate group you work with, but you can impact the success of the larger organization.

I also like the analogy of first level management being the grease that keeps the gears turning in a larger organization. I’m always looking for ways to help my team work more effectively as individuals and as a team. One of the always open questions is “What can I help you with? What roadblocks can I help remove?” In that same manner, the opportunity exists for me to help remove roadblocks between and with other parts of the organization. Sometimes that is as simple as doing a favor for someone in another group and knowing that if I need something I can then go to that person or organization when I need something. Hopefully the goal of that is to help the larger organizations work more smoothly.

Additionally, my role includes helping my boss be effective and helping to buffer both my group and my boss to help things work more smoothly. Typically this means I work hard to not surprise my boss when issues come up – or when they do come up, I try to have a possible answer to the problem where and when I can.

There was certainly a time when I was a Developer when I had no interest in the things the managers did, partly because I saw no value to me, partly because I wasn’t entirely sure what they did. And that’s some of it, I think, a good manager may work behind the scenes, quietly working to keep things moving smoothly. Good managers often don’t have lots of sound and fury around them because they’re trying to keep things operating smoothly and calmly.

Now I’m in the place in my career where I look above me in the hierarchy and am not sure that I want to do that job. Now we’re talking managing managers. Even less work with the day-to-day accomplishments, more strategy and less tactical, more influence but less direct impact as they now work through at least two layers of indirection. Where once I looked at management and thought “Why would I want to do that?”, now I feel much the same about the next layer above me. Time will tell, there’s certainly a new set of skills to be learned there and it’s clearly a very important role.

I started out talking about being a Jack of All Trades, Master of None and that’s certainly been true of me in terms of other areas in my life, most particularly my hobbies and skills outside my profession.

I can do basic plumbing: Fix a toilet, replace a garbage disposal, maybe replace a dish washer, but I would bring in a professional if I’m messing with pipes. Similarly, my electrical skills are limited to rewiring, replacing a switch or plug-in, doing some basic wiring. I have a healthy respect for anything involving 220V since I saw my Dad get hold of some of that and watched him shoot across the room as his legs straightened involuntarily when working on the washer or dryer. I know just a bit about working on a car. I never wanted to know enough to do my own brakes because I wouldn’t even consider risking my family on my skill at replacing brakes!

I’ve dabbled in computer animation, art, ukulele, writing, sculpting, painting, drawing, photography, building computers (hardware and software), woodworking, but in none of those would I consider myself any more than a tyro. I enjoy the early learning phase of a new thing but each of those has its own learning curve, its own 10,000 hours to excellence and I just don’t have the hours in my life to invest in those – at least not so long as I have a full time job and career.

I can imagine that if I ever do retire I will be a serial tinkerer and that would probably be just fine for me. But, the risk would always be that the next shiny object would crop up and I’d move on to the next thing to grab my interest. I can imagine worse ways to spend time, but not if I have to find something that I do well enough to get paid for it!

For that I need to stick with that thing which offers me the best overlap between my interests and my skills and what the market will pay for and that is certainly where I find myself and for that I’m very fortunate.

I had a recent conversation with a family member trying to figure out what they wanted to study at college and it was a decidedly odd conversation from my perspective because the thrust seemed to be “What should I do that makes me the most money?” rather than “This is what I’m really interested in or what I’m really good at – how can I grow those skills?”

In that case and with my own kids I’ve been consistent in my message: Find the things that you are passionate about and do those and then figure out how to make whatever amount of money you think you need to be happy. Passion first, money second. The other way around lies madness, in my opinion. I can’t imagine choosing a job for the money and hating the job. I realize it’s important to make your bills, but your bills should follow from what you make, not the other way around.

I realize my career has existed in the Venn diagram that is the three overlapping areas of my interest, my personal strengths and what the market was willing to pay well for, but I certainly didn’t know that starting out. I can imagine that living in the overlap of only two of those things could be just fine – you could do far worse than having your strengths and interests intersect. But only having one – especially just chasing after money – would be the thing least likely to make me, at least, happy. But, working towards that trifecta seems like a good thing to shoot for!