Question
Is it better to be niched and a subject matter expert? Or, a generalist who knows a bit about a lot of things?
Answer
This is a highly unproductive framing in my experience.
Depth/breadth besides being sterile and taxonomic in their approach to capabilities, are uselessly fuzzy and confused. It is useful for organizing libraries, not for managing your own intellectual development.
Consider a bioinformatics expert, originally trained as an engineer (I know one such person). The person is "broad" because of his multi-disciplinary knowledge (biology, computing and engineering), but "deep" because he has done a LOT of projects using a set of technical tools.
Is he broad or deep? Or broad+deep? I think the question is silly.
Instead of depth, think about a dimension you can call "deliberate practice" (some sort of complex, repeatable, sophisticated activity where you can keep increasing your skill levels as in a video game with an infinite number of levels). Something where you've invested 10,000+ hours (see Gladwell's Blink and Outliers).
Instead of breadth, think about "associative fertility" ... the set of domains across which you are able to make unexpected connections that aren't just vague and exciting metaphors and analogies but lead to concrete innovations. This is NOT the same as breadth.
You need to progressively increase both your DP skill level (which might end up cutting across traditional boundaries in ways that look "broad" to others) AND your "associative fertility" (measurement: your ability to surprise others with the weird new tricks you use in your DP skill game).
Depth/breadth besides being sterile and taxonomic in their approach to capabilities, are uselessly fuzzy and confused. It is useful for organizing libraries, not for managing your own intellectual development.
Consider a bioinformatics expert, originally trained as an engineer (I know one such person). The person is "broad" because of his multi-disciplinary knowledge (biology, computing and engineering), but "deep" because he has done a LOT of projects using a set of technical tools.
Is he broad or deep? Or broad+deep? I think the question is silly.
Instead of depth, think about a dimension you can call "deliberate practice" (some sort of complex, repeatable, sophisticated activity where you can keep increasing your skill levels as in a video game with an infinite number of levels). Something where you've invested 10,000+ hours (see Gladwell's Blink and Outliers).
Instead of breadth, think about "associative fertility" ... the set of domains across which you are able to make unexpected connections that aren't just vague and exciting metaphors and analogies but lead to concrete innovations. This is NOT the same as breadth.
You need to progressively increase both your DP skill level (which might end up cutting across traditional boundaries in ways that look "broad" to others) AND your "associative fertility" (measurement: your ability to surprise others with the weird new tricks you use in your DP skill game).