Jack of All Trades, Master of the Overlap
The saying ends wrong. Jack of all trades, master of none — as if breadth is a consolation prize. The original quote had a second line that got dropped: often times better than master of one.
The overlap is where the interesting work happens.
An LLM (Sonnet 4.6) was used to clean up these thoughts and make them more readable. All content, opinions, are my own.
Why the Overlap Multiplies
A web developer who understands motion doesn’t just build the thing — they build it feeling right. A designer who can code doesn’t wait to see if the idea works. A motion designer who understands systems thinks in components, not one-off animations.
Each skill doesn’t just add to the others. It multiplies them.
The Honest Challenge
The honest challenge is time. You can’t give equal attention to everything, and the gap between a specialist and a generalist in any single discipline is real. But specialization has its own blind spots. The deeper you go in one direction, the harder it becomes to see the edges of your own domain.
The answer isn’t to master everything. It’s to know enough of each discipline to speak its language — and recognize when a problem from one world has already been solved in another.
The Full Picture
The goal isn’t the full stack. It’s the full picture — the code, the motion, the composition, the system — held together by someone who can see all of it at once.
That’s what the overlap is worth.