Universal Soldier

"Anyone should be able to change diapers, plan invasions, cut pigs, design buildings, manage ships, write sonnets, keep accounts, build walls, set bones, facilitate death, execute orders, give orders, collaborate, act independently, solve equations, analyze new problems, throw manure, program computers, cook tasty, fight well, die with dignity.

Specialization - the lot of insects ... "

Robert Heinlein, Enough Time for Love, 1973

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"Universal Soldier" - the impossible dream of American science fiction, military and ... employers. How good it would be if one copywriter and SEO wrote texts, and SMM worked, and selling articles with a conversion of 50% would give out to the top, and PR would work with a twinkle. And along the way, I would also rewrite news, set up contextual advertising, make up the semantic core, skillfully pick the code and build funny cats for social networks in Photoshop. And all this is high quality, fast. Not a worker, but a real homo universalis - a dream!

History suggests that homo universalis are real individuals, but they all lived in the distant past. Leonardo da Vinci, Johann Goethe, Alexander Humboldt, Rene Descartes, Nicolaus Copernicus, Gottfried Leibniz, Mikhail Lomonosov, Lewis Carroll, Dmitry Mendeleev ... All these people made a huge contribution to several areas of art, philosophy and science.
By definition, Wikipedia, homo universalis or polymates are people whose interests and abilities are not limited to one area of ​​expertise. In this case, a distinctive feature of all polymathēs are not only diverse interests, but also the presence of tangible practical results in all areas of their activities. That is, da Vinci and Mendeleev were not just addicted to different areas of art and science, but also became masters of their craft in each of them. In modern interpretation, the concept of homo universalis applies only to prominent personalities of the past. At the same time, the current “universal person” is not an encyclopaedist and polymate, but rather an active specialist, whose thinking works not only in terms of studying existing models and working principles, but also in terms of improving old ones or creating fundamentally new approaches applicable to completely different areas of activity.

Combine man or narrow specialist?

For an employer, a “universal employee” is both good and bad. It is good, because a universal specialist can at a decent level perform a number of tasks related to his main activity. And the benefit here is not only that such an employee needs to pay only one salary. Sometimes a person working alone on a project works much more efficiently than a team, saving time and labor on communication, coordination and inclusion in ideas. Man-combine is indispensable when it comes to simple projects that do not require a highly specialized approach and special knowledge. But although I, in essence, have a multiple-timer, I will say honestly — I would not like to treat my teeth with such a specialist.

Uzokozatochennye workers - "masters", top-class specialists who know "all about the little." This is their strength and weakness. They are excellent in their field of activity, but narrow specialization often leads to isolation, inertia of thinking, stereotypedness and low speed of adaptation to the changing demands of the working environment. A look at the related task from the limited knowledge sector puts many of them at a standstill. Moreover, narrow specialists like no one else quickly reach the bar. Realizing their abilities in the market of the same industry, the most that is available to such employees is work in a company that symbolizes the “top” of the industry.

On the other hand, no one, except for a specialized specialist, is able to quickly, clearly and professionally solve the problem posed to him. Working in the first years in the “Internet client” as a “human combine”, I experienced the difficulties of accomplishing tasks that are simple for a narrow-format worker and extremely difficult for a wide profile specialist. If I’m three hundred times as a diligent content manager, a skilled copywriter or a guru of SMM, I can’t beautifully draw a nameplate on a product photo or make it so that “you can navigate the site using the“ arrows ”on the keyboard. Although, I can probably, but in order to learn and complete the task, I will need 10, 20, 100 times more time than the designer and programmer, in this particular case. So in some cases, narrow-profile workers cannot be replaced even by hundreds of homo universalis.

Who is to blame and what to do?

Training a universal specialist suggests a radically different approach to education. First of all, a specialist of a wide profile should possess abstract universal schemes of activity, be able to use these schemes in a specific professional field and, if necessary, change their structure. Education (primary, secondary and higher) in the form in which it exists now, does not even allow one to think, not what to say about the training of generalists. The narrow framework in which children are driven back in kindergarten are becoming more and more already at school, at the university, and later at work.

It seems to me that for the solution of a number of tasks, the qualification and experience of a universal worker is quite sufficient, while some industries require only “masters”. Naturally, a multifunctional specialist of the format that is found today cannot be presented with the same requirements as a highly skilled “master”. However, you can always look at the staff and decide from whom it is possible (and necessary) to “grow” a real “master”, and who will be most effective as a “universal soldier”.

We hoped to find at the end of the article an answer to the question: “who is better, homo universalis or a narrow-profile specialist”? It will not work, because I have no definite answer to this question. So far, only thoughts that I shared ...