Do Tech Firms Really Want Liberal Arts Majors? 266
Nerval's Lobster writes: Not too long ago, a Forbes writer declared that a liberal arts degree had "become tech's hottest ticket." At so-called 'disruptive juggernauts' such as Facebook and Uber, George Anders wrote, 'the war for talent' had moved into non-technical realms such as marketing and sales. While there's undoubtedly some truth to Anders's thesis, technology recruiters and executives aren't seeing any less demand for strong technical skills in a wide variety of roles (Dice link). When there's a need for tech professionals with 'soft skills,' at least one recruiter just recruits computer-science majors from liberal arts schools, figuring those recruits will be more 'well-rounded.' To be clear, Forbes doesn't suggest that IT employers have begun mixing liberal-arts graduates into their technical teams; the article talks more about those graduates ending up in supporting roles such as sales and marketing, or else becoming intermediaries who translate the customer's product requirements into engineering solutions. But nobody should think that a strong technical background isn't as valued as ever throughout tech companies.
No. (Score:3)
No.
Yes, Yes I do (Score:2, Insightful)
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Unfortunately you will tend to get these answers:
1. Yes.
2. It's not working.
3. I just turned it on and it won't work. No, I didn't change anything.
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Because the more of these people that enter the tech field the sooner they can start answering the phones for "Helpdesk, how can I help you?" and have 0 chance of them leaving that career path due to their complete and utter lack of technical aptitude.
Everyone in Operations should work the Help Desk at some point in his or her career. There is no substitute for that experience.
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Of course that's their view.
It's just reflexive ego protection. Engineers can't actually understand things they don't, hence they are 'one trick ponies'. That 'one trick' being 'solve all the problems we don't understand'.
I've found that Engineers are at least as likely to be good managers as non-techs. Bonus: those that can manage people also understand the technical aspects.
Also note: Spark plugs now last 50k miles or more and cylinder heads are aluminum. They are protecting you from your own cross
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Their one trick is to approach every problem like an engineer would. Which is great if you're facing an engineering problem and horrendous if you've misidentified the issue.
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It's also common in areas of the third world where family and social connections matter more than ability.
What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I believe that is the point the AC was trying to make.
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No, they don't (Score:5, Funny)
Re: No, they don't (Score:2)
I have one of those (Score:3)
I have a Masters in history and also a programming degree. So if you have any openings for breaking-the-paradigm-new-perspectives-shaking-things-up managers, I'm your man!
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Programming degree? Never heard of that one.
I on the other hand have and Engineering degree and a remembering dates degree.
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Re:I have one of those (Score:5, Funny)
>> Where do you think all the Java programmers come from?
I thought there was a spawn point in India, actually.
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As a history major, what would you think of someone with a 'remembering dates' degree?
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Office Space (Score:2)
or else becoming intermediaries who translate the customer's product requirements into engineering solutions
So they take the specifications from the customers and take them down to the engineers?
I believe these will be the first people to be laid off. Hopefully they have some kind of great idea like a jump-to-conclusions mat.
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Depends heavily on what you're building, but this kind of person is very useful in systems engineering particularly. You get all kinds of customers, people who really don't get technology, or who half understand something out there but want that things "except instead of x do y" and you learn that x and y are just incomprehensible gibberish and he really means something else, but no technical person can approach it without hysteria or barfing, or one of those things inducing the other. This kind of person a
Outsource or H1B technical people... (Score:2)
...It stands to reason that the only positions that can presently be legally hired in the US will come with a liberal arts background.
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"supporting roles"? How condescending. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a tech person who generally tries to avoid sales people as much as possible, but I'd never in a million years suggest that sales is a "supporting role". If it were not for the sales staff where I work, I'd have no income, and consequently be living in a van down by the river. The engineering staff knows how to do a lot of great stuff, but getting the foot in the door at a customer and then getting them to buy our product isn't one of them. There are other departments a company might be able to get by without, but sales isn't one of them.
Without a product, you can't sell anything.
Without a sales, you don't have income.
Without income, you can't pay the people who make the product.
(Repeat)
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I'm always surprised by sales. I know in theory a company can't make any money without sales and marketing to provide customers, but as a supplier and customer, most of the salesguys I meet are idiots.
As a supplier, I was on new hire training with a few sales guys from our company, and I was amazed at how clueless they were about our products. I don't even work hands on with finished products and I know more than them.
As a customer, when I reach out to a supplier for help at work I find:
-Their "outside sale
Forgot the disclosure (Score:2)
Keep in mind the Nerval's Lobster who "submitted" this article is Dice themselves.
An English Major friend of mine is doing well (Score:3)
He got an MS in Rhetoric and then worked in various office admins roles for a while. Then he got a job writing documentation. This expanded over time to requirements gathering and test planning. All of which requires more of an ability to communicate with people both on the technical and non-technical side of the process.
So don't discount it. LA majors can contribute if they are given the correct jobs and allowed to grow into them.
Top jobs (Score:2)
There will never be enough hair dressers and telephone sanitizers,
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Indeed. They should be the first to settle any newly-found planets.
It depends on what was actually studied (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is there isn't a real standard as far as a liberal arts education is concerned. This wasn't always the case. There used to be a very rigorous coursework every bit as demanding as technical degrees. Math, science, music, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, anatomy, etc. the problem started when student loans became available from the government. There are a whole bunch of new students that have a bunch of money but no business in college. You can't place them in technical degrees because there are standards schools need to meet. So liberal arts was expanded and dumbed down at some schools to get all of this new money. There are still some great liberal arts programs out there but you better do your research so you aren't wasting your time and money.
Yes and no. (Score:2)
Tech companies will certainly hire fresh liberal-arts grads for the same sorts of jobs liberal-arts grads fill in any company, and have for years. They will not (absent extraordinary extra-curricular experience) hire them for jobs requiring specialized skills like programming.
There's no need to pay engineer salaries to people not requiring engineering expertise.
Any headline that ends in a question mark... (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I would be careful (Score:2)
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so many schools have jettisoned much of the cannon
Ah, the days when a University was a true fortress of wisdom.
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Not this again (Score:2)
> Not too long ago, a Forbes writer declared that a liberal arts degree had "become tech's hottest ticket."
I've been hearing this refrain every couple of years since I was in university. That was so long ago our connection to the world was BITNET.
Having worked in or for several dozen companies over that span, I've seen no indication that liberal arts are hired more or less than anyone else. I call BS.
Sure (Score:2)
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We don't generally hate liberal arts ... in this case we just have no idea of why tech firms would be hiring people without tech skills.
Of course, in a browser with javascript disabled, the Forbes article renders as the oh-so-poetic "false", and I don't give a damn enough to click the dice link.
So, TFA is pretty much non-existent as far as I'm concerned, and it's mostly yet another article submitted by that Lobster guy which links to dice. At this point I
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We don't generally hate liberal arts ... in this case we just have no idea of why tech firms would be hiring people without tech skills.
Perhaps because they want to stay in business, since tech firms that have only tech skills can't do anything else, like run a business.
Somebody's gotta babysit all the pencil necks.
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As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position, nor would their degree count for anything more than a HS diploma when hiring for a non-tech position. Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems. They have also screwed up the one major life decision they have made so far: Their college major.
Also, I have no interest whatsoever in hiring "well-rounded" employees. They may be better people, and engage in interesting conversation at the
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Well rounded==absolutely no technical background.
Who gets to decide what 'well rounded' means? I took far more history than history majors took science. English as well.
Re:YAY (Score:5, Insightful)
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In a parallel universe, this question was asked on slashart: "why is it that art history majors need Calculus to be well rounded but engineering majors don't need to take 17th Century Baroque Masters for the same reason?"
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There will always be more idiots clucking. We should continue to ignore them.
Programming's a lot about design, so yes! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position
As a programmer for ten years, I would definitely hire a liberal arts major for a programming position. After working alongside several and interviewing others, I have to echo the professor who wonders if his students have any kind of taste [paulgraham.com].
They may know the syntax. In fact anyone can learn that in a couple of weeks. What I keep running into, though, are programmers who can't program their way out of a paper bag, who would stare at me blankly if I quoted Brian Kernighan when he said "Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming."
Actually lately it seems a liberal arts major is about as likely as a science major to know anything about design. But I will tell you that I would hire a gifted musician, painter, or journalist that shows the seed of understanding good design, over a humdrum programmer who's like, "If it runs it's good."
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What I keep running into, though, are programmers who can't program their way out of a paper bag, who would stare at me blankly if I quoted Brian Kernighan when he said "Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming."
That sounds like the quality control at the college level is going down hill and there're a bunch of kids being run through a degree mill. While good programmers don't spring fully formed form the head of Zeus and there's probably loads of things that colleges should be teaching, but aren't, there are really only people who can learn to understand what is meant by that quote and people who just won't get it. The former can adapt to whatever problem you throw at them, but the latter are only good for what th
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Re:Programming's a lot about design, so yes! (Score:4, Informative)
I would hire a gifted musician, painter, or journalist that shows the seed of understanding good design, over a humdrum programmer
False dichotomy. Sure a gifted musician may be better than a bad programmer. But why not hire a gifted programmer?
That's not a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy would be to say, "There are only gifted liberal arts majors and humdrum programmers." A gifted programmer would be wonderful, no doubt. Isn't that what I was saying a gifted artist might become?
What I was saying was, so important is a sense of design that it trumps college major, at least for entry-level programmer positions. Right now I'm looking for that PostgreSQL guy with 10 years of experience and a good sense of design, but . . . no dice.
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At the end of the day, any job from sweeping the floor to CEO is both an art and a science, if you don't recognise that you will never be good at anything.
Re:Programming's a lot about design, so yes! (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh, that was a cutting comment. You really stuck it to him!
Re:YAY (Score:5, Insightful)
In a productive workplace the workers aren't drones that perform simple tasks as they are ordered from the top down. You end up with a CEO that knows nothing about technology deciding what technology to use on a product that has no value and doesn't work.
In a real productive environment there is open communication between all employees. People higher up explain problems they want to solve to the technical people and the technical people come up with ways to solve for the problem the other people didn't even know existed. Then they collaborate and decide what the best solution is. This way you solve the actual problem and do it in the most efficient way possible.
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We fought really hard to change that. It wasn't easy at all. We finally convinced them with a prototype we made on our own time that blew away the terrible stuff we had been ma
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They have also screwed up the one major life decision they have made so far: Their college major.
Whether and when to go to college is a far more important. If liberal arts majors want to work in IT, there are always certifications. If you will not hire them, big deal.
Others will.
Holy Hyperbole, Batman! (Score:3)
Every single employee of your company is either an engineer or high-school grad? (Or a liberal arts major paid like a minimum-wage drone.)
I seriously doubt that.
And if you think liberal arts majors aren't trained to think logically, I don't know what to tell you. A decent liberal arts program most certainly covers that, just like any decent engineering program has some soft-skills in there.
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And if you think liberal arts majors aren't trained to think logically, I don't know what to tell you. A decent liberal arts program most certainly covers that
Not based on the curriculum I've seen and the individuals I've met. Thinking, perhaps, thinking logically, not so much.
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Feelings are more important than thoughts to them.
They feel your server software needs to be mauve...
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GP: As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position, nor would their degree count for anything more than a HS diploma when hiring for a non-tech position.
PP: Every single employee of your company is either an engineer or high-school grad?
And this boys and girls is why I wouldn't hire liberal art majors either. Reading is supposed to be their forte, yet the parent post cannot even understand what the GP said. S/he creates a false dichotomy ignoring other careers such as acc
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Perhaps you should have read the next bit of sirwired's post. I'll repeat it here:
"(Or a liberal arts major paid like a minimum-wage drone.)"
He's right, you're wrong. Draw a Venn diagram if it helps.
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As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position, nor would their degree count for anything more than a HS diploma when hiring for a non-tech position. Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems. They have also screwed up the one major life decision they have made so far: Their college major.
Also, I have no interest whatsoever in hiring "well-rounded" employees. They may be better people, and engage in interesting conversation at the water cooler, but they are not better employees, and are not going to add as much to the bottom line as a workaholic nerd with no social life.
Where to even begin. There is NO correlation between one's major, and one's social life. English Majors are just as likely to be closeted freaks as Math or CS majors. There is a correlation between the work produced by those that can think creatively and those that are just code monkeys. If you run a sweat shop, that's your business. But for most industries, having soft skills are critical to being able to do your job well. Most of the best coders I've ever worked with were not CS majors, although a f
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Source, please? That's a hell of a claim.
There have been numerous studies showing that there are strong correlations between certain MBTI types and certain majors; I'm not saying MBTI is a proxy for "social life", but at least introversion/extroversion play into types of interaction in social life.
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Your posting illustrates that fact that a classical and rigorous liberal arts education has not been obtainable in America for some years. You don't even know what it is and what such a preparation can do for employment.
Another problem is that education is conflated with training. US students look to college for training, when they should be looking for an education.
Having said that, current "liberal arts" graduates are unemployable, except in the joke sense of being capable of inquiring whether fries are
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It's still out there. They just have to look for it.
University of Chicago in particular has stuck to it's guns regarding classic liberal arts education.
The damn jebbies beat a better than average college liberal arts education into me in HS, fuckers.
99% of LA education is all about the party.
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Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems.
The liberal arts deal fundamentally with the human equation.
The engineer of the late 1950s plans a multi-lane expressway downtown.
He tunes out anyone who complains that the waterfront would be severed from the city, healthy neighborhoods splintered or paved over and the poor walled in. He also ignores any objections that the signature sky-way to be built over the harbor would become insanely dangerous to drive in winter and prohibitively expense to maintain.
He is blind to the social consequences of his ac
Not a refection of reality (Score:2)
Yes that happened in some places like Detroit - don't blame the engineer for deliberate policy imposed by managers that are likely to have had a classical "liberal arts" background far more "well rounded" than today but were really just pricks who didn't care about the consequences when they set the policy.
As for the stereotype, many engineers of the lat
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Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems.
I took symbolic logic in the philosophy department. There was lots of logic in other philosophy classes. Not so much solving problems, maybe, but lots of shooting down bad ideas.
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As did we in the view of some by not studying law, not going into real estate and not getting rich by drawing tattoos on teenagers.
For a general career in an office, retail, etc an arts degree is far better than high school alone.
Re:YAY (Score:5, Informative)
Nor will they come in one morning with a shotgun and shoot the place up.
The worst mass shooting in US History was by an English major [wikipedia.org].
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Now, now. Don't be talking facts to a liberal arts major, they don't like facts. They are cold and hard and liberal artsy people like warm and fuzzy.
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No, the worst mass shooting in US history was by the sons of farmers, ranchers and merchants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:YAY (Score:4, Funny)
Hey now, Cheney was responsible for the best public shooting in America - he shot a lawyer in the face with a shotgun. Props where they're due!
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That happens whenever a company is making a commodity product. Avoid working for those companies. That should be common sense. If you work for a company where what you do _doesn't matter_, how do you expect they will treat you?
3Dfx was wrong about the commidification of video cards. Look what it got them.
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What about jobs that require more social interaction, writing/communication, or interaction with non-technical people? Working on the security side,
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all that knowledge only goes so far if you can't explain to people, including your bosses/company executives/etc what things mean
Do you have any evidence at all that liberal arts majors are better at "explaining things"?
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Probably true, but if you work in a place where HR screens all resumes before you see them, and HR has bene programmed to select only people with certain degrees from certain schools (every company I have worked for does this, except one start-up), then that power is taken out of your hands.
HR more than anything else is creating the situation where only people with some kind of college degrees can apply to salaried positions, and where only top tier schools can be viewed for technical positions. It's wrong
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'Professional' HR is the death of most startups.
I've seen an office going from a team that works into a nightmare of incompetent seat warmers in 2 years. The 2 years after the owner was convinced to delegate hiring to an HR pro.
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OTOH, this is extremely rare and should be evaluated on a case basis.
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Just ride it out. This crap will go the way of the Dodo, soon. As will Bennett.
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But then if you do learn history, you learn we keep repeating it anyway.
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Just because something is taught out of 'Arts and Sciences' does not make it a 'liberal art'. Much as LA types want to claim them.
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Perhaps you should educate yourself on what the Liberal Arts are, as "liberal" has nothing to do with modern politics.
The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (Latin: liberal, "worthy of a free person") to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for Ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the core liberal arts, while arithmetic, geometry, the theory of music, and astronomy also played a (somewhat lesser) part in education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education [wikipedia.org]
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Perhaps you should educate yourself on what the liberal arts are today, as opposed to the 1920s.
You describe 'classic liberal arts' education. An almost extinct school.
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The paragraph I quoted from Wikipedia was for Ancient Greece (500-336 B.C.E.). That's 2,500 years ago, not the 1920's. The word "liberal" meant "free man". That's what is missing from today's liberal arts programs.
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In modern times, liberal arts education is a term that can be interpreted in different ways. It can refer to certain areas of literature, languages, art history, music history, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology, and science.
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It may be untrue, but one of your first big independent decisions in life should indicate you can read, particularly read a chart showing the expected demand for new hires for a particular major.
Oh God, here come the fla
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Are you the new "Moo Cow"?
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Also, Forbes looks like a spinning circle without Javascript enabled, so that's two strikes.
Fuck you sideways in the nuts with a live shark's head, Dashslot's Thibault.