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I think AI has achieved quite a lot. Consider Google and Amazon, much less Watson. AI is like "magic". Whenever we figure out how to do something, it's no longe

I think AI has achieved quite a lot. Consider Google and Amazon, much less Watson. AI is like "magic". Whenever we figure out how to do something, it's no longer AI. It's statistical learning or computer vision. However, the problem of general AI turned out to be a lot harder than we thought it would be. Moravec's Paradox deserves mention here. Hardware and software will interact more in the 2010s to '30s. What will people design all this awesome hardware with? Software. Taking the other direction, I do agree that the hardware world is becoming more interesting to people who might, a generation ago, have thought of themselves as "pure software" people. In 1985, you could "do AI" and never go outside of a garbage-collected language (Lisp). In 2013, it's hard to do high-performance machine learning without having some knowledge of all the neat things people can do with hardware (e.g. GPU programming). Also, the existence of continuing education options like Coursera is making people more Y-shaped than T- or I-shaped. I agree with you that a lot of the "hot" work in the social media world (learning a bunch of damn APIs) isn't very hard, deep, or interesting. However, don't rule out software entirely.

SatvikBeri 14y ago
I understand T-shaped, but what are Y-shaped and I-shaped?
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I-shaped: depth with no breadth (highly specialized, no cross-disciplinary knowledge). Y-shaped: some breadth at intermediate levels. More depth in one's non-specialty areas than T-shaped. (The top of the T becomes a triangular funnel instead of a bar.)
  - SatvikBeri 14y ago
    Thanks! One thing I've noticed is that many of the most successful people are multi-specialists, i.e., they have two (or more) "specialties" that combine in a rare and valuable way. Examples include the rise of the "growth hacker" or "data scientist", who are typically programmers applying their craft towards marketing or statistics respectively. There's both a perception component and a real value component. If you're the best Marketer, other Marketers will frequently deny it, get jealous, or sabotage you. But if you're "the Marketer who also writes code", nobody feels threatened. You're competing in a different area, so people can support you and ask you for favors when they need help. In terms of real value, a junior programmer with strong business skills in a company with no other programmers can contribute millions of dollars of value through basic automation-I've actually done this. The same programmer will have a much lower dollar value when surrounded by better programmers, at least initially, because all the low-hanging fruit has been taken.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Excellent observation. This relates to my observation that it's better to be an "X Who Programs" than a "J.A.P." (Just A Programmer) in most cases. Unfortunately, corporate HR systems are built on the idea that people need to be reduced to a single, specific role. Dimensionality is the rule, here. We suffer from it in hiring, where it's literally impossible to meet perfectly the requirement lists many companies put out (demanding 5 years of experience in a 3-year-old NoSQL database). This seems to be a part of why hiring is so hard on both sides. Yet, once people are working together, if people aren't careful, they forget dimensionality altogether and attempt to form a total order, and it's this process that leads to the insecurity and sabotage.

SatvikBeri 14y ago

I understand T-shaped, but what are Y-shaped and I-shaped?

michaelochurch 14y ago
I-shaped: depth with no breadth (highly specialized, no cross-disciplinary knowledge). Y-shaped: some breadth at intermediate levels. More depth in one's non-specialty areas than T-shaped. (The top of the T becomes a triangular funnel instead of a bar.)
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  Thanks! One thing I've noticed is that many of the most successful people are multi-specialists, i.e., they have two (or more) "specialties" that combine in a rare and valuable way. Examples include the rise of the "growth hacker" or "data scientist", who are typically programmers applying their craft towards marketing or statistics respectively. There's both a perception component and a real value component. If you're the best Marketer, other Marketers will frequently deny it, get jealous, or sabotage you. But if you're "the Marketer who also writes code", nobody feels threatened. You're competing in a different area, so people can support you and ask you for favors when they need help. In terms of real value, a junior programmer with strong business skills in a company with no other programmers can contribute millions of dollars of value through basic automation-I've actually done this. The same programmer will have a much lower dollar value when surrounded by better programmers, at least initially, because all the low-hanging fruit has been taken.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    Excellent observation. This relates to my observation that it's better to be an "X Who Programs" than a "J.A.P." (Just A Programmer) in most cases. Unfortunately, corporate HR systems are built on the idea that people need to be reduced to a single, specific role. Dimensionality is the rule, here. We suffer from it in hiring, where it's literally impossible to meet perfectly the requirement lists many companies put out (demanding 5 years of experience in a 3-year-old NoSQL database). This seems to be a part of why hiring is so hard on both sides. Yet, once people are working together, if people aren't careful, they forget dimensionality altogether and attempt to form a total order, and it's this process that leads to the insecurity and sabotage.