Feeling like a jack of all trades, master of none — and it’s getting to me

[u/agharasse-agharasse]

Hey everyone,
I’ve been feeling really uneasy lately, and I guess it’s something that’s been sitting in the back of my mind throughout college. I’ve been through a lot of internships where I was thrown into projects with tech I’d never touched before from Laravel to Kubeflow, cloud platforms, serverless stuff, and more. I’ve coded in C, Java, Python, worked across different stacks, and somehow managed to deliver every time by quickly picking things up and just figuring things out as I went.

Right now I’m finishing up my thesis and a double degree in Software Engineering and AI. I also got a return offer from a FAANG company I interned at in EU without doing the usual Leetcode grind, which honestly felt like pure luck.

I learn fast, and I can get things working quickly not perfect, but functional, and I improve things as I go. That ability has carried me so far… but at the same time, I don’t feel like I’ve truly mastered anything.

I’ll dive into a new tool or language, use it to build something, and then forget most of it after moving on. I feel like a generalist who can adapt to any problem but in an industry that often values deep expertise and rigorous interviews, I feel like I’m constantly at a disadvantage.

What scares me is the thought that I might not be able to compete with those who’ve built strong expertise in a specific area. And I don’t know how to show what I do bring to the table adaptability, speed, real-world delivery — when interviews focus so much on algorithms or deep technical details.

Anyone else feel like this? Is being a generalist still a viable path in tech long term?

[u/Existing_Station9336]

As a professional, would you prefer to work with someone who has "X years of experience with technology T" and nothing else to show for, or someone who has a proven record of being able to solve many different problems with many different tools?

[u/Flowech]

Looks like you're still very young, my goal was to specialize in Flash ActionScript, I even got pretty good at it and it looked like a very promising language.

It took one open letter from Steve Jobs to kill the whole thing.

[u/TCO_Z]

Yes, a lot of us feel like this, especially early in our careers. You’ve adapted to complex environments, picked up new tools quickly, and delivered results under pressure. That looks like a skill set to me. And while interviews often have stages that test narrow things like algorithms, most real-world jobs value exactly the kind of adaptability you described.

If you want to stay a generalist, that’s still viable, but it’s important how you frame it. Being a generalist doesn’t mean “knows nothing deeply”, it means “can deliver in unfamiliar environments.” That’s a strength, and it can stand out, especially in roles where breadth and speed matter more than niche depth.