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The article mixes two ideas that partially contradict each other. 1. Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE [...] You end up with people who are good at taking tests

by kartan 9y ago

The article mixes two ideas that partially contradict each other. 1. Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE [...] You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place. 2. Do we know how to cultivate wisdom? Yes we do. I agree with the second statement, and its implications are huge. If we give people good education and good role models, that people are going to be wiser. I don't agree with the first statement. There is still a lot of prejudices against software developers and other high skilled professionals that are part of America's culture. It correlates high IQ with low creativity. Can't high IQ people learn wisdom? Is not part of the second thesis that it can be taught? The best example I have against the first thesis is how developers behave at the companies that I have worked for. These are Swedish companies that value collaboration, personal live balance, and other social skills. People at this companies are social, technically brilliant, they participate in team building activities, we go for beers together, there is more gender parity (but still is very low), etc. If a company values and rewards this values day to day, people are social animals and behave as such. If a company asks developers to work weekends and has no vacation time. Are you surprise to find only angry, non creative, non social people?

watwut 9y ago
Why do you think American developers are non creative non social people? Both conference/hackatlon/meetup culture and startups who sell themselves to potential employees on cool cultures suggest that American developers are way more social then they like to admit. Non-social people tend to produce culture that is less fanatic to various socialization ways. Add to it companies that really follow agile processes extremely close teamwork and occasional pair programming and you get industry where shy or introverted person is at pretty high disadvantage. I mean, so many here measure developer worth by participation on hackatlons and talks on meetup. Introverted or loner engineer is in serious disadvantage there.
- kartan 9y ago
  > conference/hackatlon/meetup culture and startups who sell themselves to potential employees on cool cultures suggest that American developers are way more social then they like to admit That's my point. They are social, but they can't be like that in companies that value long hour days and weekend work. It is not the developers that are not social, but that "old fashioned" companies force them in a more restricted, non-creative behavior. In a traditional waterfall model, developers are supposed to be implementers, not thinkers. In that kind of company, everything is hierarchical and creativity is not expected. So their developers behave that way. And I will guess that it is that the model of developer that the article is talking about. The article, for sure, is not talking about the developers that you describe. And that's my problem with the assumption in the article that people that are good at a technical problem are not social. :)
  - watwut 9y ago
    It is startups who require the most hours per week and proof of out of work passion, not just old fashioned companies. Maybe even not mostly old fashioned companies. I think that stereotype of non-creative non-social developer is largely overblown - fed more by movies and gossip then actual reality. I have seen some statistic about developer being more introverted then general population, but that is about the difference. Introverted does not mean non-social. I don't really know what you mean by traditional waterfall model and creativity - waterfall was more of process organization. Whether you get to be creative or not depends mostly on business company works in and personalities involved. You can not be creative if you implement insurance calculation and you can be creative when you are styling cheezy art shop.
neogodless 9y ago
Idea 1 simply states that wisdom and creativity may actually be more important than the intelligence or knowledge being tested for. It doesn't insinuate that we cannot cultivate wisdom, nor does it say that the two cannot coexist. Merely that we're only filtering based on those tests, without also considering wisdom. I do not see the contradiction.
stcredzero 9y ago
If we give people good education and good role models, that people are going to be wiser. I think the structure, culture, and emergent properties of web forums have shaped out culture in some insidiously highly negative ways. I think that the totalitarian and high censorious nature of many web forums has conditioned entire generations to subconsciously expect the world to have the same totalitarian and high censorious nature. I see multiple instances of younger people getting "organized" online, only to engage in mass-groupthink stretches of logic and commonsense in order to manipulate some authority to do what they want under threat of their emotional toxicity, or "yellow journalism" style association of that authority with something unsavory. Never mind that what they want contradicts established law, and that their efforts would best be aimed at changing those laws. Many of the same groups of people seem to expect the authorities to have the same absolute and arbitrary power to change laws, regulations, or even the laws of physics in response to their emotional toxicity. (This applies on both sides of the left-right political divide!)
CM30 9y ago
Is this culture of working weekends and having no vacation time really the norm though? I mean it seems to be in Silicon Valley and where startups are concerned, sure. But the average American likely doesn't work in that sort of company, with the kinds they work at (retailers, large corporations, etc) trending more towards a normal working week with more reasonable vacation options.

by kartan 9y ago

watwut 9y ago

Why do you think American developers are non creative non social people? Both conference/hackatlon/meetup culture and startups who sell themselves to potential employees on cool cultures suggest that American developers are way more social then they like to admit. Non-social people tend to produce culture that is less fanatic to various socialization ways. Add to it companies that really follow agile processes extremely close teamwork and occasional pair programming and you get industry where shy or introverted person is at pretty high disadvantage. I mean, so many here measure developer worth by participation on hackatlons and talks on meetup. Introverted or loner engineer is in serious disadvantage there.

kartan 9y ago
> conference/hackatlon/meetup culture and startups who sell themselves to potential employees on cool cultures suggest that American developers are way more social then they like to admit That's my point. They are social, but they can't be like that in companies that value long hour days and weekend work. It is not the developers that are not social, but that "old fashioned" companies force them in a more restricted, non-creative behavior. In a traditional waterfall model, developers are supposed to be implementers, not thinkers. In that kind of company, everything is hierarchical and creativity is not expected. So their developers behave that way. And I will guess that it is that the model of developer that the article is talking about. The article, for sure, is not talking about the developers that you describe. And that's my problem with the assumption in the article that people that are good at a technical problem are not social. :)
- watwut 9y ago
  It is startups who require the most hours per week and proof of out of work passion, not just old fashioned companies. Maybe even not mostly old fashioned companies. I think that stereotype of non-creative non-social developer is largely overblown - fed more by movies and gossip then actual reality. I have seen some statistic about developer being more introverted then general population, but that is about the difference. Introverted does not mean non-social. I don't really know what you mean by traditional waterfall model and creativity - waterfall was more of process organization. Whether you get to be creative or not depends mostly on business company works in and personalities involved. You can not be creative if you implement insurance calculation and you can be creative when you are styling cheezy art shop.

neogodless 9y ago

Idea 1 simply states that wisdom and creativity may actually be more important than the intelligence or knowledge being tested for. It doesn't insinuate that we cannot cultivate wisdom, nor does it say that the two cannot coexist. Merely that we're only filtering based on those tests, without also considering wisdom. I do not see the contradiction.

stcredzero 9y ago

If we give people good education and good role models, that people are going to be wiser. I think the structure, culture, and emergent properties of web forums have shaped out culture in some insidiously highly negative ways. I think that the totalitarian and high censorious nature of many web forums has conditioned entire generations to subconsciously expect the world to have the same totalitarian and high censorious nature. I see multiple instances of younger people getting "organized" online, only to engage in mass-groupthink stretches of logic and commonsense in order to manipulate some authority to do what they want under threat of their emotional toxicity, or "yellow journalism" style association of that authority with something unsavory. Never mind that what they want contradicts established law, and that their efforts would best be aimed at changing those laws. Many of the same groups of people seem to expect the authorities to have the same absolute and arbitrary power to change laws, regulations, or even the laws of physics in response to their emotional toxicity. (This applies on both sides of the left-right political divide!)

CM30 9y ago

Is this culture of working weekends and having no vacation time really the norm though? I mean it seems to be in Silicon Valley and where startups are concerned, sure. But the average American likely doesn't work in that sort of company, with the kinds they work at (retailers, large corporations, etc) trending more towards a normal working week with more reasonable vacation options.