It's certainly true that you can't be strong everywhere, and that's certainly working as intended. Competently covering a role and being useful in a fight should be sufficient, cover two rolls is also doable though odds are your skirting the edge a little, clearly some roles take more some less. But what I'm saying is, at some point during optimizing it's a very different character then what it started as. Which can be fine or it can be a problem all depending on the creators image.
I read something on these boards once & liked it enough to mostly remember it & follow it.
To be a good SR character you need to be doing "SOMETHING" in each of 3 scenarios.
1. Combat
2. Information Gathering (Research, Social Skills, Contacts, Drone Recon, etc etc)
3. Some form of Support Function (Infiltration, Healing, Facing, Repair, Piloting, Etc Etc)
Most of SR revolves around Information Gathering & Combat, and you need a 3rd option for times when neither are up.
You don't need to be able to do 5 things for each of those scenarios, but ONE is pretty much a Must.
So basically, if you are a Troll Samurai who's only skills are Shooting & Slashing with 1's in LOG/CHA, then you need to dump a bunch of Karma into your Contacts pool to help you out with IG & Support. Meanwhile being an Elf Face with 8 Charisma & a load of social skills & contacts is still no excuse for not being able to do anything in combat but run/hide/scream like a 6 year old.
At least that was the basics of what I read. And its good advice for anyone in this game, IMHO.