NYCPHP Meetup

[Ajai Khattri]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Christopher R. Merlo wrote:

> That's actually not true, and your apparent belief in this untruth is
> probably what has led to your seemingly very strongly felt distaste for
> university education.

At least US education...

> The purpose of a college or university is to provide the student with an
> education, so that the student may go on to contribute back to society.  An
> education involves more than just learning a trade, or a skill.  Moreover,
> most experts in any field are usually well-versed in some other field as
> well; this is what allows educated people to do things like draw analogies,
> or relate to non-technical people.

This sort of implies that someone that is highly specialised cannot relate 
to people in other dsciplines. I dont think that is true (Im sure you 
could find some prime examples but they are probably exceptions). I 
clearly dont need a class in English to write these emails with correct 
capitalization and punctuation (or spelling!).

> Physicists must read the classics in
> English literature so that non-physicists will talk to them at dinner
> parties; this helps with things like professional networking.

The attitude outside the US is that that is something you do in your own 
time. (In the UK, you might get a day or half day off per week to pursue 
your own intrests outside of your academic study). In any case, you would 
learn some of those skills in your work experience too.

> (Everyone who
> got your job because you know the right non-IT person, raise your hands.

My hand is not raised. Connections might count in certain businesses but 
Ive never been hired because of people I know. (And Im doing exceptionally 
well in my career thanks very much).

> and the reason they kept tapping me, over my
> colleagues, was that I was an effective communicator, and I was able to
> translate plans to code, and feature requests to timetables, but also code
> to English, and bug hunts to revised timetables; and I didn't scare the
> suits away when I talked to them.

I think that says more about the lack of technical knowledge of suits more 
than anything else. I think technical people should be managed by 
technical people. I think people wanting to manage technical companies 
should learn about the technology rather than generic management. This, to 
me, is the real problem.



-- 
Aj.