The Future of Generalist Work

What else has been hidden by summary? What thoughts must we resist abridging? Those giant sequoias echo a reminder to ask ourselves, what are the unseen things today that could be growing?

Simon Sarris • Long Distance Thinking

If AI is the ultimate summarizer, and we transition our human processes to include AI to strip away context, what will we be missing?

Mihika likens the role of a 0-to-1 team within a large company to that of Hestia in Greek mythology, who is the “keeper of the hearth.” It is Hestia’s job to always keep the hearth burning, even while other gods go out on separate quests. This means always keeping the 0-to-1 project alive and helping it spread to others, mostly through setting... See more

Lenny Rachitsky • Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma)

Model managers of tomorrow will need to learn the same things. They’ll need to know which AI models to use for which tasks. They’ll need to be able to quickly evaluate new models that they’ve never used before to determine if they’re good enough. They’ll need to know how to break up complex tasks between different models suited to each piece of... See more

Dan Shipper • The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy

the people who can start things will be the major beneficiaries in the coming years, because the barrier is no longer knowledge or skills, it’s courage.

Superhuman

Different backgrounds, different views, different experiences. The best teams are diverse. These are the ingredients that spark innovation.

Daniel Rizea • Top 5 Learnings After Mentoring 100 Startups

Diversity of backgrounds can also mean diversity of generalist vs. specialist skillsets. Generalists become multi-functional, bringing domain expertise from corners that you might least expect it.

“The beginner chases the right answers.

The master chases the right questions.”

James Clear • 3-2-1: On hard conversations, how to ruin a good strategy, and asking for what you want

Generalists are masters in asking the right questions.

The Silicon Valley small business, the SV-SB, is a hybrid of sorts — it intertwines small business values and discipline with big tech know-how and ambition.

Founding teams may look like that of a “traditional” Silicon Valley startup. They’re native to Silicon Valley ethos, skills, and playbooks. But , beneath the surface, they’re different. You

Anu • Rise of the Silicon Valley Small Business

I don’t think that means we don’t need specialists. But as eminent physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson said, we need both frogs and birds. The frogs are down in the mud looking at the granular details of everything. The birds are up above and don’t see those details, but they can see multiple frogs and can integrate work. What he said is, our... See more

Don’t Underestimate Generalists: They Bring Value to Your Team

Job titles are just the most visible ladder of them all. It’s interesting that pompous executive job titles were invented during the Victorian era. This is when we started the trend of calling a cleaner a hygiene technician. A bin man became a waste management and disposal technician. Later on, a call-center worker became a communications... See more

Anne-Laure Le Cunff • The tyranny of job titles: from vanity growth to personal growth

Generalists have shirked the the notion of a true job title to fit their work and have followed the thread of providing value and making an impact. No wonder there’s a group of talented professionals hiding in plain sight given how constricting the traditional job titles have become in affirming our professional worth.