> I think if you're not over-specialized that you can still do well. Doing be a person who just writes device drivers, or just does web stuff, or just writes toolchains. Do it all, and at depth when you can.
When reviewing job reqs, I see the opposite. Outside the web and mobile arenas, companies seem to want people who are highly specialized in what they do.
I worked up until last year, when at age 62 I decided to retire -- mostly because I could! A good portion of my career was in traditional, more hierarchical industries such as rail and steel, where a sizable number of older employees were often the norm. I also tended to specialize in legacy applications that other (mostly younger) staff didn't really want to touch -- products like PowerBuilder or IBM (Lotus) Notes. Yeah, I also did work with newer technology, but I never really let go of the older stuff because 1) it was the core of my earlier experience and I didn't mind working with it, and 2) there always seemed to be a need for someone to do maintenance, updates, or conversions.
We are also looking for pretty specialized people, but there are none. So we will take also those, who are willing to learn. The downside is, that the money that goes to their training would be theirs, if they already knew what is needed (i.e. they cannot ask for the same money/benefits as those who are "ready made").
What area of software development are you hiring in? My experience with low-level development (hardware, signal processing, and such) is that companies won't even interview people who don't tick nearly all of their specific boxes.
Perhaps, but in a few years when the company has a down year will you be replaceable by the next specialist, or are you able to get a few fingers in different pies by being diversified?
That's where I see a Catch-22. You need a specialization to get hired, but in doing so severely limit your job options. Of course, in some sense that is a side effect of demanding specialization in the first place.
I did real-time radar signal processing for six years, and hardware production support on radar electronics for 3.5 years prior to that. I can't convince anyone that these experiences are easily transferrable to other areas such as robotics and medical devices. In fact, I don't even get the chance; hardly anyone will even give me a phone screen. Yet I have been doing NLP for the past three years and can't get recruiters to leave me alone about it.
Well, you want a reputation as a "go-to" person. The ability to get your fingers into all kinds of pies can be pretty interesting (as in: when layoffs have happened, you are more likely to survive because you can work on anything).
Some organizations don't like this. They want to pigeon-hole you as "the mouse driver guy" or whatever, and when your company stops making mice you're in trouble. Avoid these places if you can.
When reviewing job reqs, I see the opposite. Outside the web and mobile arenas, companies seem to want people who are highly specialized in what they do.