Universal Soldier

“Any person should be able to change diapers, plan invasions, slaughter pigs, construct buildings, operate ships, write sonnets, bookkeeping, erect walls, straighten bones, facilitate death, execute orders, give orders, cooperate, act independently, solve equations, analyze new problems, throw manure, program computers, cook deliciously, fight well, die worthy.

Specialization is the destiny of insects ... ”

Robert Heinlein, Enough Time for Love, 1973

"Universal Soldier" is a pipe dream of American science fiction, military and ... employers. It would be nice if one copywriter and SEO texts wrote, and SMM was engaged, and selling articles with a conversion of 50% gave out, and PR-would be engaged with a twinkle. And along the way, he would also rewrite the news, set up contextual advertising, made up the semantic core, skillfully picked his code and built funny cats for social networks in Photoshop. And all this is of high quality, fast. Not a worker, but a real homo universalis - a dream!

History shows that homo universalis are very real personalities, but they all lived in the distant past. Leonardo da Vinci, Johann Goethe, Alexander Humboldt, Rene Descartes, Nikolai 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 of Wikipedia, homo universalis or polymates are people whose interests and abilities are not limited to one area of ​​knowledge. Moreover, the distinctive feature of all polymathēs is not only diverse interests, but also the presence of tangible practical results in all areas of their activities. That is, both da Vinci and Mendeleev were not just keen on different areas of art and science, but also became masters of their craft in each of them. In the modern interpretation, the concept of homo universalis applies only to outstanding personalities of the past. While the current “universal person” is not an encyclopedist and polymate, but rather an active specialist, whose thinking works not only in relation to studying existing models and principles of work, but also in terms of improving old ones or creating fundamentally new approaches,

Man-harvester or specialist narrow profile?

For an employer, a “universal employee” is both good and bad. 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 on a project alone works much more efficiently than a team, saving time and labor on communications, approvals and inclusion in ideas. The man-harvester is indispensable when it comes to simple projects that do not require a highly specialized approach and special knowledge. But although I, in essence, a multi-worker, I will honestly say - I would not want to treat teeth of such a specialist.

Narrow-minded workers are “masters”, extra-class specialists who know “everything about a little”. This is their strength and weakness. They are excellent in their field of activity, but narrow specialization often gives rise to isolation, inertia of thinking, stereotypedness and low speed of adaptation to changing requirements of the working environment. And a look at a related problem from a limited knowledge sector confuses many of them. Moreover, narrow specialists like no other quickly reach the bar. Realizing their abilities in the market of the same industry, the most that is available to such workers is working in a company symbolizing the "top" of the industry.

On the other hand, no one, except a narrow-profile specialist, is able to quickly, clearly and at a high professional level solve the problem posed to him. While working in the first years as an “individual harvester” in the Internet Client, I experienced the difficulties of realizing tasks that are simple for a narrow-format worker and extremely difficult for a broad specialist. If I’ve been a diligent content manager, skilled copywriter or SMM guru three hundred times, I won’t be able to beautifully draw a nameplate on the product’s photo or make it so that “you can use the“ arrows ”on the keyboard to search for a site. Although I probably can, 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.

Who is to blame and what to do?

Training a universal specialist requires a radically different approach to education. First of all, a specialist with a wide profile should own 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 to speak about the training of specialists of a wide profile. The narrow framework into which children are driven back in kindergarten are already becoming at school, at the university, and subsequently at work.

It seems to me that to solve a number of problems the qualifications and experience of a universal worker are quite sufficient, while some industries require exclusively “craftsmen”. Naturally, the multifunctional specialist of the format that is found today cannot be presented with the same requirements as the highly qualified "master". However, you can always look at the staff and decide from whom you can (and should) “grow” the real “master”, and who will be most effective as a “universal soldier”.

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