I'm an Hypen-shaped developer...

Hi r/cscareerquestions,

I've just learned about the concept of the "shapes" of skills of an developer, like for example a T-shaped engineer which has broad knowledge of different subjects and a few subjects that they put more time into and are more experts in. There's also I-shaped which are master in their respective subject. When thinking about where I'm fitting in this I just think I'm a Hyphen-shaped dev, I have knowledge of tons of subjects and industries, but without any expertise in any of them.

I've been in the industry for 4 years now having jobs in web, cybersecurity and embedded development and I wanted to get a job in devops or game dev next. I find pretty much everything in CS interesting and want to learn more about those subjects.

I was made aware of this issue when I was applying to different jobs and the recruiter was checking my GitHub with wildly different projects (Mobile, Games, Web, Low-level stuff) and my employment history and was just straight asking me: what interests you and what's your expertise. I wasn't able to respond, I liked everything in my previous jobs (every job had it's strength and weaknesses, but I couldn't say a better one) and I don't feel like I'm an expert in anything, instead I'm more generalist and can apply what I know in other industries into different fields.

I feel like this turns off a lot of recruiters and will eventually prevent me from reaching better roles in the future, but at the same time I like being able to get a job in what I find interesting in the moment and don't want to restrict myself into a field so soon in my career.

Should I just stick with something?