Generalized person vs Specialized in modern world

I enjoy speeches of Mr.Ishan De Silva, head of engineering in Millennium Information Technologies(Millennium IT, MIT). He nicely explained how the traditional job of a software engineer has transformed into an efficient, cost effective, speed product delivering machine. This writeup carries the essense of Mr.Ishan De Silva’s speech.

Modern software industry is even evolving from the Agile methods to advanced job rotational agile methods. A good engineer should have ‘T‘ skill set. Which is having limited expertise in a broad range of areas but having a sound and keen knowledge and expertise in a one specialized area.

To gain the less expertise in broad range of skills one must have experience in every area. If I consider software industry Quality Assurance, DevOPS, Business Analysis, and User Experience like sub area’s key knowledge should be known by a developer who is working in the back office in order to full fill the needs Cost Efficiency, Speed and Efficiency.

If a company wants to exist in the modern competitive world it should be ahead of the competitors. By adopting to the latest changes in the related field and having a strong learning curve. Not even a company, an individual’s career performance depends on the amount of focus on generalized skill set rather than the traditional specialized set of skills.

This is the reason why BMW is still having only automated parking and Tesla having fully autonomous vehicles. Elon Musk practices a good level of skillset within his employees.