During my first startup job, I took my freshly-minted history degree and explicitly treated the body of communications from engineering, marketing, sales, and t

During my first startup job, I took my freshly-minted history degree and explicitly treated the body of communications from engineering, marketing, sales, and the customer base as 'historical sources'. This helped me figure out what was actually going on, as opposed to what everyone was constantly yelling about, and I suspect that's why I was able to weasel out of that customer support gig into a product management position. In turn, that let me eventually make the connections and get the background knowledge necessary to start my own thing. So yes, I certainly don't consider my degree 'useless'. Honestly, you want some humanities majors sprinkled around your organization for the different skill sets they bring. Rands' classic 'Russian Lit major' post says it better than I could: http://randsinrepose.com/archives/russian-history/ http://randsinrepose.com/archives/russian-history/