Why Not Having a Niche Became My Strength

TL;DR: Not having a niche allowed me to embrace my natural inclination to see the bigger picture and connect systems. While specialization offers clarity and authority, my strength lies in orchestrating clarity from chaos, understanding how systems interact, and asking the right questions to remove friction. This approach, though less visible, creates meaningful impact by improving team dynamics and product outcomes. Embracing this path has shown me that not having a niche is not a weakness, but a unique strength.

Have you ever been given advice by someone you deeply admire, and even though you recognize its value, something inside you knows it doesn't quite fit? You understand the logic, you see the path it offers, and you want to believe it will work for you. So you follow it, hoping that clarity will come with commitment, and instead, you find yourself hesitating, second-guessing, or slowly losing momentum. Eventually, you either walk away or realize you were forcing yourself into something that was never yours to begin with.

That’s exactly how I felt when a mentor I deeply respected encouraged me to specialize. The advice made sense. It had structure, clarity, and years of industry wisdom behind it. So I picked a direction and went all in on backend development. For a while, I pushed myself to stay the course, thinking that focus would bring fulfillment. Yet I felt flat. The more I tried to narrow in, the more I lost energy.

Specialization is common advice for a reason. It works well for many. It gives people a strong sense of identity and a clear ladder to climb. Then one day, I paused and asked myself, what if I’m not wired that way? What if I’m a different kind of developer?

That question changed everything. I stopped fighting the way my brain naturally works and started leaning into it. Since then, the path has been harder to define, but much easier to follow. It’s not linear, and it’s definitely not smooth, and yet, for the first time, I feel like I’m climbing toward something that’s truly mine.

And ironically, it also helped me recognize the value in the path I didn’t take.

The Value of Going Deep

I’ve always admired people who go deep. The kind of developer who picks a domain, masters it inside out, and becomes the go-to person for solving complex, specific problems. There’s something incredibly satisfying about watching someone operate with that level of focus and confidence. It’s no wonder the industry often celebrates specialists. They build authority. Their skills are recognizable, measurable, and often in high demand. They master and own their knowledge.

The Orchestrator Trait

For a while, I thought that was the path I needed to take, but something in me kept drifting outward. I wasn’t just drawn to the code, I was drawn to the context. How systems interacted, how processes either flowed or jammed, how a small decision in one corner could ripple across the entire product. I couldn’t stop zooming out.

Seeing how everything connects, floating above the architecture in my mind and mentally sketching the system, that's where I feel strongest. I’ve come to see it as my superpower. These mental gymnastics are second nature to me. I can break down complexity quickly. I love to reverse-engineer code and trace logic back to its origin; the thought process that birthed these simple pieces.

But like any superpower, this one comes with its own kryptonite. The broader I go, the more gaps I have. And sometimes, those gaps trigger that familiar impostor feeling, the voice that says, “You should know this.” and one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is the humility to own those gaps, to ask questions without fear, to become the dumbest person in the room and to trust that not knowing everything doesn’t make me less than, it just means I’m wired differently.

Recently, I was assigned to help revive an old project with outdated infrastructure-as-code, undocumented setups, and manually created resources. The task? Figure out how it all worked, connect the dots, and take ownership.

It felt like untangling a slimy knot in the dark. I dug into the codebase, reverse-engineered configurations, made a lot of deductions based on environment variables in clusters, and asked countless questions, often feeling like the least knowledgeable person in the room.

The infrastructure spanned multiple technologies, and I had zero experience with many of them, like Kubernetes or ArgoCD, and instead of panicking, I leaned into my strength: seeing how systems connect. I sketched maps of the architecture, traced dependencies, and learned just enough of each tool to move forward.

By asking “Why was this built this way?” and “What’s the core goal here?”, I began to clarify the mess. Eventually, we modernized the setup. And I realized: my value wasn’t in knowing everything, it was in orchestrating clarity from chaos.

Jack of All Trades, Master Of None?

Does this mean that I’m incapable of deep knowledge? No, I don’t believe so, and on the contrary, the depth I do have is intentional, and so are the gaps. To be an orchestrator is not just about seeing patterns or connecting dots. It’s about knowing where to go deep, when to go deep, and why it matters. It’s the ability to foresee what will become critical, and to extract the most value from every inch of effort.

I also believe that if you identify with this way of thinking, there’s one skill you absolutely need: the ability to master something, even when you don’t want to. Not everything will be exciting. Sometimes the work is tedious, or the value isn’t immediately obvious, but you dive in anyway, because that knowledge unlocks something bigger. Without discipline, an orchestrator becomes shallow, disconnected from the details they claim to coordinate.

The balance lies in intentional depth. That’s the key. Not knowing everything, but knowing what’s worth knowing.

You’re More Than a Coding Machine

At some point, your impact as a developer starts to go beyond the code you write. You begin to notice that progress isn’t always blocked by technical problems. More often than not, it’s blocked by the human part of the job: unclear priorities, unnecessary dependencies, or the wrong conversations happening at the wrong time. Learning to identify and remove that friction becomes a quiet but powerful skill.

One of the simplest ways to create value is by asking better questions. Not to stall things, rather to reveal ripple effects that others haven’t considered yet. Questions like “Do we really need this small aspect of a feature to move forward?” or “Who’s actually going to own this after it ships?” My favorite question to ask is “Can we do this later, at the very end?”, because sometimes the real blocker isn’t technical, it’s just the illusion that everything is urgent.

As you keep zooming out, you start thinking in terms of flow. Not just the flow of code, but the flow of conversations, feedback loops, and delivery cycles. You begin to spot small points of friction: repeated questions, forgotten decisions, vague ownership, drifting priorities. These are subtle and they add up.

Efficiency isn’t about writing more and better code. It’s about helping the system run smoother. Sometimes that means reminding a team about a forgotten decision from months ago. Sometimes it means forcing a conversation between two people who are on the same page but reading different books. Other times, it means giving early shape to a fuzzy idea, even if that shape will evolve or be replaced entirely.

These aren’t loud contributions. You won’t find them in a changelog. Still, they quietly move things forward. In software development and business in general, this kind of momentum compounds into real growth.

The Quiet Path to Meaningful Impact

I’ve started to realize that the work I care about most isn’t just building software, it’s building systems that help people build better solutions overall. I think about how teams communicate, how priorities get shaped, and how decisions ripple through a product’s lifecycle. I’m less interested in being the person with all the answers, and more interested in becoming the one who creates the conditions for the right answers to emerge.

That kind of thinking takes time. It requires patience, pattern recognition, a willingness to zoom out even when no one asks you to, and, most importantly, and I cannot stress this enough, it requires a deep sense of humility. It’s not always visible. It’s not always rewarded immediately, but I believe it’s the kind of thinking that scales. It makes teams stronger, products healthier, and outcomes more sustainable.

Not everyone needs to follow this path. Some people thrive on depth, and their focus drives innovation in incredible ways. However, if you’re someone who’s always been drawn to the in-betweens, the handoffs, the gaps, the friction points, then you might just be wired for something else.

You’re not broken for not having a niche. You’re built to orchestrate.