"T" people: lots of breadth; collaborative across disciplines; depth in one or two
"I" people: deep and narrow; the experts
Bastien Rieck explains all of this in a posting about recruiting. He says this about software people specifically:
Given the state of the art in the software industry, T-shaped people are a sought-for commodity: the current ‘framework du jour’ might be obsolete in a few years, but the horizontal bar of a T-shaped person ensures that they can also contribute to other aspects of a project, and quite likely will develop new vertical bars, i.e. new expertise over time
Throughout my career, the most impactful projects always had a T-shaped person onboard. This person would usually not be an expert in the subject matter, but would be able to provide the direly-needed scaffolding and foundation of a project that is all too often ignored in the initial phase, until it comes back later on with full swing to wreak havoc. This includes, for instance:
- Setting up a suitable build system.
- Writing some unit tests for the code.
- Creating a skeleton of the models that are to be developed.
- Designing nice mock-ups or logos.
- Creating animations or graphics for presentations.
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