For the last 12 years, I’ve done just about everything you can do inside a SaaS company.
Marketing, demand generation, sales, customer success, support, finance, operations, process design, OKRs, performance reviews, comp planning—you name it, I’ve probably built it, fixed it, or cleaned it up at some point.
For a long time, that gave me a bit of an identity crisis.
I never really knew what to call myself.
If I wanted a new job, what would I even put on a resume?
“Does everything”? Not exactly a LinkedIn-friendly title.
Meanwhile, I’d look around and see software engineers, data scientists, or RevOps specialists pulling down high salaries and getting all the hype. I’d think, Man, I should’ve just gone deep in one lane.
Then one day I came across the full version of a quote I thought I knew:
“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
That last part hit me like a ton of bricks.
For years, I only knew the first half — and carried it like a quiet insult.
But the full quote? It flips the meaning entirely.
It’s not a criticism. It’s a compliment.
The Modern Generalist
Looking back, being a “jack of all trades” is exactly what made me valuable.
Every startup I’ve worked in needed someone who could shift gears fast — one week I’m building a marketing funnel, the next I’m writing a comp plan, then I’m deep in support tickets or figuring out how to improve retention.
It wasn’t chaos. It was adaptability.
And in today’s economy, that’s becoming the skill that matters most. Companies are tightening budgets. Teams are leaner. Everyone’s expected to do more with less.
And now, with AI in the mix, the game’s changed even more. The people who can move between disciplines, connect dots, and use AI to multiply their output — they’re becoming unstoppable.
The “specialist economy” rewarded deep focus.
The next era might reward range.
Embracing the Range
So if you’ve ever felt that same angst — not knowing what your “thing” is, wondering why you never fit neatly into one box — I get it.
But maybe the box isn’t the point anymore.
Maybe your ability to wear ten different hats, switch contexts, and learn whatever the situation demands is the point.
The world’s changing fast. The companies that survive will be built by people who can flex, adapt, and connect ideas across silos.
So if you feel like I felt, stop apologizing for being a jack of all trades. Embrace it.
Because the second half of that quote the part they don’t usually tell you is the part that’s coming true right now.
“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”