From the footnotes:

> There is a veritable zoo of characters of the alphabet, trying to capture the elusive properties of people out there in the real world. It should be understood that I do not even for a second think that one pithy letter is sufficient to describe a real person; all of these characterisations are merely hinting towards certain properties. As always in real life, there are many different shades on a spectrum to consider here

T-shaped is somewhat generalized because over time people like this become more. Overall they are great for the start of projects and long term because they do what is necessary to ship products and projects.

> Over time, one might think that a T-shaped person thus turns into a comb-like pattern. As far as I understand, this has not been studied yet by ethnographers. Maybe the term ‘serial experts’ would also been appropriate, except for its unfortunate similarity to the criminal world.

The author states T-shaped people become the glue or "scaffolding" for a successful project.

> Ts as multipliers. Throughout my career, the most impactful projects always had a T-shaped person onboard. This person would usually not be an expert in the subject matter, but would be able to provide the direly-needed scaffolding and foundation of a project that is all too often ignored in the initial phase, until it comes back later on with full swing to wreak havoc

In my experience, T-shaped people can and do become experts of product, these are people more willing to make things work and ship projects over just focusing on their own goals or field of study solely. T-shaped people become product experts as they have seen more areas or earlier parts of the whole.

T-shaped people can take a project from start to finish due to them being product/market experts from their involvement in more than just one area. Startups seem to operate and start best with T-shaped. In game development, good game projects and interactive projects especially Ts are prevalent.

In game development for instance, Valve prefers T-shaped employees, generalists in many areas but deeper knowledge in one more more areas, people willing to help ship.[1] Even if later you have to get more depth in certain areas like rendering, networking, animation, audio or even branding/marketing, Ts are the trails that form that can later be upgraded or refined if needed. Ts are the root of self-organizing teams and companies like Valve.

Valve has a good take on the balance for T-shaped people that help ship games [1]. These types area willing to wear different hats even if it isn't in the area they want to be their main focus. The mere understanding of those areas from experience in them, can make their main focus more finely tuned to work and mesh with the product.

> We value “T-shaped” people.

> That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also
experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T). This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often have to pass on people who are very strong generalists without expertise, or vice versa. An expert who is too narrow has difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really contributing as an individual

Too much specialization can be bad for projects and people, especially early on. Though by definition Ts would have a one or more deeper knowledge skillsets and can bounce between I-shaped and T-shaped without issue.

For startups, games, apps, content, even entrepreneurship or sole-proprietors to small companies, T-shaped is the way it has to be in most cases. Everyone is somewhat T-shaped, it is a sliding scale.

For academics at the Masters/Phd level, being T-shaped may actually be harmful or even hidden on applications because the nature of academics is the deeper I-shaped focus, you are trying to further the deeper detail of some subject. I bet lots of more broad generalists leave this off their descriptions/applications because of the bias against it. Everyone is T-shaped, just some are more willing to do different roles and wear different hats. It is a balance of being a leader in their chosen subject, but also wanting to get their foot in the door. A T-shaped person can be an expert still, and in many areas, but stating too much generalization may lead to bias in academia as this article summarizes.

[1] Valve Employee Handbook (page 46) https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...