Specialization
Written by Anuar Burkitbayev and Alexey Dudarev
Imagine that you’re in the stone age and you have to: grow your own crops; hunt animals; sew your own clothes, etc. You might be an expert sewer and produce exquisite clothing but be a poor hunter and gatherer and thus, have poor yields which would lead to your starvation. On the other hand, your neighbor (let’s call him Carl) is an expert hunter but poor sewer so he walks around with little or no clothes. Your other neighbor (Let’s call him Jimmy) is good at farming and so has good knowledge of growing crops. Knowing this information, you propose to your two neighbors that: you handle the sewing; Jimmy covers the farming; Carl handles the hunting for your community. After some time, your community has ample amounts of clothes, crops, meat, and as an added bonus, everyone has more free time. Your community is thriving and has discovered specialization.
Specialization is the process of concentrating on and becoming an expert in a particular subject or skill. In today’s world, this has multiple benefits and some drawbacks too.
Benefits:
Higher productivity - due to your extensive training, you could produce more of a product. This is good for firms as they have more goods that they can sell. This also saves time.
Higher pay - The supply for specialized workers in a field is low and the demand is high, because of this, you have higher wages. In addition to this, higher wages are also considered as compensation for your increased training time, during which you could have worked as an unspecialized worker and earn money.
Job satisfaction - You’ve probably decided to specialize in a field because you enjoy it. If so, you could spend more time doing the work you love, which would increase your satisfaction.
Negatives:
Boredom over time - If you do the same thing for a prolonged period of time, you’re bound to get bored of that job or task and this could lead to dissatisfaction with your life.
Overspecialization - If demand for your field of specialization falls, you can’t just simply transfer jobs into a new field because you would lack the skills for it.
