A couple of weeks ago, I had lunch with the development lead for VMware Fusion. We’ve worked together before, so we know quite a lot of the same people. During our conversation, we talked about what it takes to be a highly successful engineer, and he talked about the difference between the sage and the guru.
In his opinion, the sage is the engineer with the deep technical knowledge about a specific domain. That engineer knows absolutely everything about it, and has probably touched all of it at one point or another. The guru, on the other hand, is the engineer with a broad swath of technical knowledge about many domains. That engineer doesn’t know absolutely everything about a specific domain, but knows quite a lot about a lot of different domains, and is often able to draw connections between those domains. To illustrate his point, he talked about two developers that we both know quite well. One is a sage, one is a guru. Both are very well-respected, and deservedly so. I’d love to work with either of them again.
Both the sage and the guru are valuable. The sage can work magic in their domain. The guru can solve difficult cross-domain problems that have stymied other engineers.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this conversation lately. How does it apply to me as a user experience researcher? Do I want to be a sage or a guru? How do others view me? Is it possible to do both? Is that even something that I would want? I need to think more.
While that was perhaps an interesting exercise for comparing and classifying people, trying to aspire to one archetype or another is folly. Simply pursue what interests you, do what you do best, and strive to broaden it. Those strengths that are not already evident to your peers will naturally emerge.
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I think that it’s always worthwhile to consider what you want in your life. In the long-term, where do you want to be? Of course, this will change along the way, but it’s always a great exercise to compare who you want to be with who you are today and try to figure out how you get there.