Onyxpurr is correct that large companies hire people for specific jobs. I worked for a Fortune 400 company as a Unix admin. They also had networking, IS security, who did nothing but that; and sometimes even that was pared down, such as, IS security was broken down to a compliance team and there was an intrusion detection team. Networking was broken down too.
But as noted above, a small company cannot afford to pay 4 people $80,000/yr to perform a specific job, so they hire generalists who can do many tasks, but probably none of them expertly.
At times I am glad that I am specialized (because I get to know my skill in-depth) and have a secondary skill that I am fairly strong in. It is common that specialists have 1 or 2 secondary skills they are fairly strong in. Other times, I remember back to my first job and I did OCL, some RPG, networking, Unix, PC repair, tech support over the phone, installed machines for customers at remote locations, NT, relational databases, ISAM databases; you name it, I did it. Sometimes I really miss that job because I was constantly busy and always had something new to learn. It didn’t become so much of a “rut” that my job seems to be as a Unix Sys Admin (and only that).
