The Director of Miscellaneous
The Story
The CEO of Bravely.io, a mental health tech company, wanted to hire Milly but couldn’t fit her into any standard tech company role (Source 1). When asked to design her ideal position, Milly proposed the title herself: Director of Miscellaneous (Source 1).
She was placed across all teams except engineering and design, serving as organizational “glue” (Source 1). She describes the role as being the go-to person who would figure things out, the one connecting teams and solving cross-domain problems (Source 2).
“When you put really, really high caliber generalists in rooms with really, really high caliber specialists and you have this really diverse skill set, that’s when you can start untangling these big problems.” (Source 1).
The experience gave her the language for what she’d been her entire career. She had been working at startups for seven-plus years and never fit into a box at work (Source 1). The title “generalist” carried negative connotations initially. She describes whispering the word when first identifying as one (Source 1).
Lesson for Creators
The Director of Miscellaneous wasn’t just a creative title. It was the moment Milly understood her career pattern. Every odd job, every startup role, every country was building the same muscle: connecting disparate things. The lesson for creators is that the thing you can’t name might be the thing you’re best at. Milly didn’t discover a new skill. She discovered a label for the skill she’d been practicing for a decade.
Related
- Three Weeks From Idea to Full-Time Founder — the role that catalyzed Generalist World