No one with an ounce of self-worth should work long-term for companies that expect them to do exactly what their title implies they should and not a thing more.
You're basically being arbitrarily restricted to learning and enjoying exactly one thing when it would often make more sense in context to become involved in: Customer relations, systems administration, management, software engineering, data science, etc.
Sure, you'll become really good at that one thing, but it'll be at the cost of personal growth and job satisfaction.
> I'm probably gonna get a lot of sh!t for this post...
I mean, yeah. You've basically lampooned anybody who enjoys working in ill-defined cross-disciplinary circumstances as having "[not an] ounce of self-worth".
It sounds like, from your perspective, your field is "the important stuff" and other fields are just balls to be juggled. There's nothing wrong with that, but lots of people don't think that way. To some people, the important stuff is anything that makes their customers happy. To others, it's anything that helps them learn.
And let's dispense with the notion that "doing 3 jobs for the price of one" is an accurate description of having broad rather than narrow responsibilities. One comes at the cost of the other. If you're an equally capable specialist and generalist, and you're capable of genuinely performing those 3 jobs at once, then if you were to specialize you'd be performing the work of 3 average specialists, and you'd be in the same boat as before.
Do what you're best at and try to get the best possible compensation for it, monetary or experiential. It's as simple as that.
You're basically being arbitrarily restricted to learning and enjoying exactly one thing when it would often make more sense in context to become involved in: Customer relations, systems administration, management, software engineering, data science, etc.
Sure, you'll become really good at that one thing, but it'll be at the cost of personal growth and job satisfaction.
> I'm probably gonna get a lot of sh!t for this post...
I mean, yeah. You've basically lampooned anybody who enjoys working in ill-defined cross-disciplinary circumstances as having "[not an] ounce of self-worth".
It sounds like, from your perspective, your field is "the important stuff" and other fields are just balls to be juggled. There's nothing wrong with that, but lots of people don't think that way. To some people, the important stuff is anything that makes their customers happy. To others, it's anything that helps them learn.
And let's dispense with the notion that "doing 3 jobs for the price of one" is an accurate description of having broad rather than narrow responsibilities. One comes at the cost of the other. If you're an equally capable specialist and generalist, and you're capable of genuinely performing those 3 jobs at once, then if you were to specialize you'd be performing the work of 3 average specialists, and you'd be in the same boat as before.
Do what you're best at and try to get the best possible compensation for it, monetary or experiential. It's as simple as that.