Graduation speech

Five or ten years ago, one of the best pieces of career advice was to specialize.

Especially if you had multiple unique skills, the goal was to work at the intersection of them. If you became the world's expert in something incredibly niche, you could build an amazing career.

Think:

• An English-to-Dutch performance automotive translator
• A backend Ruby on Rails developer
• A tax attorney specializing in cryptocurrency

But with AI commoditizing so much knowledge work, I'm starting to wonder if that advice is changing.

The people who seem to be thriving today aren't always the deepest specialists. They're adaptable generalists who can learn quickly, connect ideas across disciplines, and use AI as leverage.

So I'm curious:

If you were giving a college graduation speech tomorrow, would you tell graduates to become specialists or generalists?