This echos some career advice from Dilbert creator Scott Adams. "Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things." He also goes on to say that "at least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal." The idea being that this should make it easier to leverage your other skill(s) in a work environment.
He uses himself as a prime example. He knows he's not the funniest guy in the world, nor the best artist. But by combining the two in Dilbert he's been very successful.
I have a friend who became a successful science writer after reading this very same blog post. So that's at least one anecdotal data point in Adams' favor.
https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...