“Jack of all trades, master of none.”
It’s a phrase I’ve heard plenty of times during my career, and usually not as a compliment.
We tend to like specialists. Pick a discipline. Get really good at it. Put a job title around it and stay within the boundaries.
My career hasn’t really worked like that.
A big part of it has been driven by curiosity.
I like learning how things work. I like making things. And when something catches my interest, I have a habit of disappearing down the rabbit hole to find out more about it.
Looking back, that curiosity has probably been one of the most useful skills I’ve developed.
Photography was always there
Photography has been a backbone running through most of my creative life.
It taught me to look.
Composition, light, colour, timing and observation all became part of how I thought about visual things. Even when photography wasn’t directly connected to my day job, the things I learnt through it followed me into my work.
Then there was graphic design.
For the early part of my career, design was the bread and butter. Typography, layout, branding and visual communication were the things I spent my days thinking about.
But the web was becoming increasingly important, and designing something naturally made me curious about what happened next.
How was it built?
How did the browser turn this design into something interactive?
Could I do that bit too?
So I learnt to code.
One thing leads to another
Coding eventually grew from another skill into a large part of my career.
Design became web design. Web design became front-end development. Development led further into PHP, JavaScript, WordPress, hosting, performance, SEO and the infrastructure sitting underneath websites.
The interesting thing is that the previous skills never disappeared.
I didn’t stop being a designer when I became a developer.
I didn’t stop thinking about photography when I became a designer.
Instead, the skills started stacking on top of each other.
Today I can look at a website and think about the code behind it, the user experience, the typography, the brand, the performance, the search visibility and the infrastructure it is running on.
I don’t think those things are separate problems.
They are parts of the same system.
Full stack means more than code
We normally use “full stack” to describe developers who can work across the front and back ends of a website.
I’ve always thought about my own version of full stack a little more broadly.
Code is part of it, but so are design, branding, UX, photography, marketing and increasingly creative coding.
I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest expert in every one of those disciplines.
That’s not really the point.
The useful bit is being able to connect them.
A technical decision can affect design. A design decision can affect accessibility or performance. Branding can influence UX. Hosting can affect SEO. Marketing can expose a product problem rather than a marketing problem.
Knowing enough about each part means I can often see those connections.
And professionally, that has done me a lot of favours.
Sometimes breadth fits. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Not every workplace has valued that way of working.
I’ve worked in environments where having a broad range of skills was useful and encouraged.
I’ve also worked in places where the expectation was much narrower.
You’re here to do this particular thing.
So do this particular thing.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that. Some organisations need deep specialists and clearly defined responsibilities.
But I’ve realised over time that I’m at my best when there is some room around the edges.
When I can ask questions.
When I can wander into another discipline.
When an idea doesn’t immediately belong to somebody’s job description.
Discovering in-house
I’m currently in my first genuinely in-house role, and it has made me appreciate the value of being multidisciplinary much more.
Working on one brand and one business over a longer period changes things.
Rather than completing a project and handing it over, you live with the consequences of the decisions you make.
You can design something, build it, watch how people use it, measure it, change it and then rethink it entirely.
I’ve been able to move between development, design, UX, branding, marketing, performance and creative projects depending on what problem needs solving.
That freedom has probably brought out more of my creativity than roles where my responsibilities were more tightly defined.
And perhaps more importantly, it has shown me that curiosity isn’t necessarily a distraction from the job.
Sometimes it’s the thing that makes you better at it.
The spaces between disciplines
I’ve become increasingly interested in those spaces between disciplines.
What happens when you mix programming with art?
Photography with data?
Branding with technology?
Marketing with behavioural thinking?
Design with infrastructure?
Some of the most interesting things I’ve made haven’t fitted neatly into a category.
That’s increasingly where I like working.
There is a temptation in a career to keep narrowing.
Choose your thing. Become known for it. Specialise.
There are good reasons for doing that.
But there is another path.
Keep learning.
Keep collecting skills.
Keep following things simply because they interest you.
Eventually those seemingly unrelated interests start connecting.
Maybe “jack of all trades” isn’t such a bad thing
I don’t know whether I’d confidently introduce myself as a polymath. It sounds a little grand.
But I increasingly recognise the value of having a polymath mindset.
For me, that means curiosity before specialisation.
It means knowing that learning photography might improve your design. Learning design might improve your development. Understanding development might make you better at thinking about UX, marketing or infrastructure.
You don’t necessarily know where the next useful connection will come from.
And that’s part of the enjoyment.
So perhaps being a jack of all trades isn’t something I need to defend.
After more than two decades of collecting skills, I’m starting to think the collection might be the point.
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