3 ms·

While I agree with most of your points, I think that you've mistaken engineering school with soft skills/personal management course that you can attend on weeke

by fridek 14y ago

While I agree with most of your points, I think that you've mistaken engineering school with soft skills/personal management course that you can attend on weekends or order on DVD for $19.99. To be honest, I never actually believed anyone can learn these things by being told how it works (in contrary to engineering, BTW). Making a mistake is an important part of the process. Otherwise you will get a two-week lasting hype "I will change my life and be more mature from now on" and then you are back to normal. There has to be some feedback and positive feedback is simply not fast enough.

Spearchucker 14y ago
You're right in that lessons are best learnt from personal mistakes. I think there's value in being "told how it works" however, because: 1). It's a great sanity check for an existing undertaking, 'specially one that's heading for the rocks. 2). It's a good resource to use when trying to make a case to a project or program manager about a project, new business unit, etc. As with anything in life, any particular position has an opposing position that's as justifiable.
mechanical_fish 14y ago
You can't take the "I wish they had taught me X in school" genre too literally. Often what it really means is "it's too bad X can't really be taught in school, but must be learned through experience", "it's too bad that the typical school contains very few people who understand X well enough to teach it", and/or "it's too bad that, when they told me X in school over and over again, I was so young and inexperienced and lacking in context that I didn't really grasp the importance of what they were saying". What it doesn't really mean is "they should simply start a one-semester course in X and then all the new grads will be much smarter". Why do we phrase our essays in this manner? Optimism. Optimism and marketing, which often go well together, like chocolate and peanut butter. "Ten things that you could learn from me today instead of spending ten years learning them the hard way" is a good sales pitch. "Ten things that you will spend five minutes reading, but will not truly understand, and then you'll still have to spend ten years learning them the hard way, but at least when you learn them you will already know the words for them" is not as good. ;)

by fridek 14y ago

Spearchucker 14y ago

You're right in that lessons are best learnt from personal mistakes. I think there's value in being "told how it works" however, because: 1). It's a great sanity check for an existing undertaking, 'specially one that's heading for the rocks. 2). It's a good resource to use when trying to make a case to a project or program manager about a project, new business unit, etc. As with anything in life, any particular position has an opposing position that's as justifiable.

mechanical_fish 14y ago

You can't take the "I wish they had taught me X in school" genre too literally. Often what it really means is "it's too bad X can't really be taught in school, but must be learned through experience", "it's too bad that the typical school contains very few people who understand X well enough to teach it", and/or "it's too bad that, when they told me X in school over and over again, I was so young and inexperienced and lacking in context that I didn't really grasp the importance of what they were saying". What it doesn't really mean is "they should simply start a one-semester course in X and then all the new grads will be much smarter". Why do we phrase our essays in this manner? Optimism. Optimism and marketing, which often go well together, like chocolate and peanut butter. "Ten things that you could learn from me today instead of spending ten years learning them the hard way" is a good sales pitch. "Ten things that you will spend five minutes reading, but will not truly understand, and then you'll still have to spend ten years learning them the hard way, but at least when you learn them you will already know the words for them" is not as good. ;)