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I think this point is definitely true for an academic environment, which Cal is in. For the average workplace, the ultimate determinant of your success is what

I think this point is definitely true for an academic environment, which Cal is in. For the average workplace, the ultimate determinant of your success is what other people believe you have done and can do. This is certainly correlated to what you've done, what you can do, and your ability to promote yourself. In my personal experience, what you choose to do is more important than what you know. I've mentioned a few times that I saved previous employer X $2MM/year, and I did this through finding several problems that seemed like they would be possible to automate, then learning how to automate them-not the other way around.

roc 14y ago
In my experience, the "learning how to automate them" implies the analogous step to the "technique"-learning being discussed in the article. e.g. To automate a health care provider's intake and records system well, you really do have to learn a surprising amount of how those people currently do their job. If you understand the job of the intake nurse, the needs of the physicians' assistants, the way records are processed for insurance reasons, the way doctors search and browse, etc., you can save vastly more time and money (to say nothing of improving accuracy and reducing redundancy) than you would with a straightforward records digitization process.