Why the tech industry needs Expert Generalists (w/ Martin Fowler)

Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Thoughtworks

Careers, Business, 907234, Technology

4.7 • 53 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The technology industry has embraced specialisms — not just in different fields or job roles, like web development or security, but even in terms of particular platforms or stacks. But are we losing something as every tech professional is forced to push themselves into increasingly smaller niches?

Martin Fowler and Unmesh Joshi think so. They've been thinking a lot about the importance of what they call "Expert Generalists" — professionals who can "can dissect unfamiliar challenges, spot first-principles patterns, and make confident design decisions with the assurance of a specialist."

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Martin and Unmesh join hosts Prem Chandrasekaran and Lilly Ryan to discuss how they came to identify the importance of expert generalists and why it was important to not just talk about the issue, but to explicitly name it. They also explore how they believe the industry can cultivate and encourage expert generalists, despite an entrenched tendency to overlook their value.

Read Martin and Unmesh's article, written with Gitanjali Venkatraman: https://martinfowler.com/articles/expert-generalist

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to yet another exciting episode of the ThoughtWorks Technology podcast.
0:08.0	My name is Prem.
0:09.0	I'm one of the regular hosts on the podcast.
0:11.0	I'm joined by my co-host Lily Ryan.
0:15.0	Lily?
0:16.0	Hi, I'm Lily Ryan.
0:18.0	I'm a principal cybersecurity engineer here at ThoughtWorks and another one of the regular hosts here today.
0:24.4	And today we've got two very lustrous guests, Martin Fowler. You obviously know Martin, I guess.
0:33.0	And Unmesh Joshi, who is one of our luminaries out of the India office.
0:38.3	And do you want to quickly introduce yourselves?
0:41.3	Yeah, I can go first.
0:44.3	Yeah.
0:45.3	So yeah, my name is Mesh and I'm a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks.
0:50.3	Been with ThoughtWorks for quite some time.
0:53.3	But I like to call myself working for
0:57.4	Office of Developer Happiness. That's what I call it. I'm Martin Fowler. I've loudmouthed, been
1:07.5	around at Fort Works a long time. As I've said in my recent bio, I'm past it, and I'm drinking, I'm living off the blood,
1:16.1	the intellectual blood of my younger colleagues.
1:18.6	And that blood is very tasty.
1:21.9	Wonderful.
1:22.9	So today we are going to be talking about this topic and a blog post that you folks wrote on
1:29.3	martinfowler.com, which is on this thing called expert generalist.
	...

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