6 ms·

Very wise; excellent advice. Any adult who has faced the prospect of unemployment can probably hear this fairly well, but is there any way to communicate this c

by aklemm 7y ago

Very wise; excellent advice. Any adult who has faced the prospect of unemployment can probably hear this fairly well, but is there any way to communicate this concept to younger people? I'd have loved to come out of college with a better perspective on what "employment" means for a life.

motohagiography 7y ago
Thank you. I think the point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity. My recent comment history has one about about how money is made, and that's the perspective I think young people should have. tl;dr: it's a scale of dependency, labour, time, skill, risk, capital, power. STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business and we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap.
- shoo 7y ago
  > STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business Yup! > we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap. I was thinking along these lines some years back after finally realising that (i) I was underpaid; and (ii) I had no idea how to negotiate effectively; and (iii) that there are many opportunities in life to negotiate, and getting better at negotiation from "I don't even recognise that this situation is a negotiation" to "this situation can be negotiated, here's my very awkward and mediocre effort at doing that" would have a much higher return on investment than learning yet another technical or mathematical thing. > point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity I went through a period of suspecting similar things: if there's a STEM education pipeline that products highly specialised technicians and engineers who aren't equipped with knowledge and skills to navigate and exploit a commercial environment or hierarchical political organisations, isn't the pipeline doing what employers might want? Producing very useful and focused and naive "resources" who don't understand their own value. Tools to be applied. I'm not sure how much I genuinely agree with this. But perhaps some part of it is true, with the STEM pipeline being tuned to serve the interests of employers and universities and government, but not necessarily the people going through it. If you're thinking along these lines, check out the book "disciplined minds". The author's argument is roughly that the major part of graduate education is political: demonstrating that you can serve the interests of your masters and perform creative and intelligent work on the problems you are assigned, within the constraints you are assigned. It's a good read but probably far less actionable than cracking open a few books about how to get better at negotiation, or marketing, etc.
  - jdavis703 7y ago
    I know it pretty popular to bash George Mason University these days... But one positive thing is our applied information technology program has courses requiring business skills, ethics and understanding of the global economy and culture. If you paid attention, and listened to the guest speakers they had come out weekly for the senior capstone project lectures, you'd learn quite a lot about navigating the worlds of commerce and government.
    - shoo 7y ago
      it's good to hear that at least one university is making some effort to equip graduates with a more broader view of the world. i ended up doing mostly pure-math in undergrad -- because i found it interesting, with no view on how it might contribute to a career -- so my naivety is arguably partly self-inflected!
  - watwut 7y ago
    > The author's argument is roughly that the major part of graduate education is political: demonstrating that you can serve the interests of your masters and perform creative and intelligent work on the problems you are assigned, within the constraints you are assigned. This is usually said as criticism, but I worked wit few people who could not above. It was special kind of hell. Working with someone who can't serve interests of team, can't work on assigned problems somehow switching to problems nobody needs or can't fit into constrains we have is not all that useful.
    - shoo 7y ago
      i can appreciate that: being able to understand and internalise the objectives of the team, org, etc is part of the job, when the job involves deciding what to do and tasks cannot be completely specified.

by aklemm 7y ago

motohagiography 7y ago

Thank you. I think the point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity. My recent comment history has one about about how money is made, and that's the perspective I think young people should have. tl;dr: it's a scale of dependency, labour, time, skill, risk, capital, power. STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business and we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap.

shoo 7y ago
> STEM people are not typically taught negotiations, sales, political science, marketing, or business Yup! > we're often given this conceit that we're above all that, which I think keeps us stupid and cheap. I was thinking along these lines some years back after finally realising that (i) I was underpaid; and (ii) I had no idea how to negotiate effectively; and (iii) that there are many opportunities in life to negotiate, and getting better at negotiation from "I don't even recognise that this situation is a negotiation" to "this situation can be negotiated, here's my very awkward and mediocre effort at doing that" would have a much higher return on investment than learning yet another technical or mathematical thing. > point of an undergrad degree is to produce credulity I went through a period of suspecting similar things: if there's a STEM education pipeline that products highly specialised technicians and engineers who aren't equipped with knowledge and skills to navigate and exploit a commercial environment or hierarchical political organisations, isn't the pipeline doing what employers might want? Producing very useful and focused and naive "resources" who don't understand their own value. Tools to be applied. I'm not sure how much I genuinely agree with this. But perhaps some part of it is true, with the STEM pipeline being tuned to serve the interests of employers and universities and government, but not necessarily the people going through it. If you're thinking along these lines, check out the book "disciplined minds". The author's argument is roughly that the major part of graduate education is political: demonstrating that you can serve the interests of your masters and perform creative and intelligent work on the problems you are assigned, within the constraints you are assigned. It's a good read but probably far less actionable than cracking open a few books about how to get better at negotiation, or marketing, etc.
- jdavis703 7y ago
  I know it pretty popular to bash George Mason University these days... But one positive thing is our applied information technology program has courses requiring business skills, ethics and understanding of the global economy and culture. If you paid attention, and listened to the guest speakers they had come out weekly for the senior capstone project lectures, you'd learn quite a lot about navigating the worlds of commerce and government.
  - shoo 7y ago
    it's good to hear that at least one university is making some effort to equip graduates with a more broader view of the world. i ended up doing mostly pure-math in undergrad -- because i found it interesting, with no view on how it might contribute to a career -- so my naivety is arguably partly self-inflected!
- watwut 7y ago
  > The author's argument is roughly that the major part of graduate education is political: demonstrating that you can serve the interests of your masters and perform creative and intelligent work on the problems you are assigned, within the constraints you are assigned. This is usually said as criticism, but I worked wit few people who could not above. It was special kind of hell. Working with someone who can't serve interests of team, can't work on assigned problems somehow switching to problems nobody needs or can't fit into constrains we have is not all that useful.
  - shoo 7y ago
    i can appreciate that: being able to understand and internalise the objectives of the team, org, etc is part of the job, when the job involves deciding what to do and tasks cannot be completely specified.