In my experience, what is most commonly sought after in job openings seems to be the type with deep knowledge on some limited domain. Only very rarely somebody seems to be clearly seeking a "ICT handyman". On the other hand it also seems that sometimes they are seeking for the ultimate expert with deep skills in dozen domains. Anyway, being more like a guy with broad skills it is a bit discouraging to find so few job postings with a spot-on requirements. Not that it would be crucial at this moment as the current position feels both suitable valued but you know, better safe than sorry and thus its good to have at least a vision of a exit plan.
Whether it is about diverse interests or just my "professional karma" that I seem to end up doing all sorts of things and thus getting a rather broad experience. Havnig done coding in dozen languages on at least three OS families, user support, reporting, system administration, DB design, network related tasks, all sorts of data extraction and analysis and getting familiar with various OSs and user interfaces it is clear that most of that might not be so ashtonishingly deep knowledge that would require anyone to drop one's jaw - but rest assured, it will get the job done. It also guarantees that I can throw myself into such obscure things as printer operation on MVS or rescuing a crashed PBX info system on a Digital Unix box. Challenges that nobody expects to have (both the platforms in these examples are long obsolete) but still somebody has to deal with them when the need arises.
This is not to in any way say that somebody with deeps skills in something would be somehow worse - in contrary I admire people how really know their stuff inside out and from top to bottom. We also need those guys, as without people like that nothing really fancy technical stuff would not be here since all that requires tackling such obscure issues that no lay man can even imagine. I also need those guys since if they were not there I would have no source of help after running into a wall in attempts to solve some hard issue.
Basically this seems to boil down a all embracing notion that both types are needed to form a good ICT team: those that have tackled the task already earlier and are willing to do so again, and those who have not done that but are definately willing to do it nevertheless. The former onces are more productive in the specific thing but the latter should be just as good for a broader spectrum of things.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion and as subjective as it gets, opposing views are more than welcome!
