Ask Slashdot: Any Place For Liberal Arts Degrees In Tech?

Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes A new article in Fast Company suggests tech CEOs want employees with liberal arts degrees, because those graduates have critical thinking skills. Meanwhile, a new article on Dice (yes, yes, we know) posits that STEM degrees such as data science, IT admin, and electrical engineering are what science-and-tech companies are going to want for the foreseeable future. What do you think? What place do those with liberal arts degrees have in companies such as, say, Tesla or a biomedical engineering firm?

Comments

Dual degrees

[Anonymous Coward]

There's certainly a place for people with dual degrees in tech and liberal arts -- people who truly understand the tech they're discussing, plus have the experience in communication and argumentation to explain it, push for it, and lead it.

Re:Dual degrees

[grcumb]

There's certainly a place for people with dual degrees in tech and liberal arts -- people who truly understand the tech they're discussing, plus have the experience in communication and argumentation to explain it, push for it, and lead it.

Hi there. I'm the Chief Technologist of a thinktank and do a lot of technical work, from application & systems design and development through to legislation, policy and regulation. I did a double major in Theatre and English Lit. when I went to university. It amazes me that the majority of 'engineers' or science geeks show such disdain for liberal arts majors. Do they not realise that smart people are everywhere?

The thing that really makes me chuckle, though, is that they don't seem to believe that someone with strengths in the arts could ever be an autodidact, in spite of the fact that most good geeks have this capability as a defining trait. In theatre, I had to learn basic electronics, electrical circuitry, technical design, how to build weight-bearing structures, basic colour theory, linguistics, aesthetics (which, scoff as you like, requires pretty heavy thinking about the nature of human consciousness) and about a dozen other disciplines. And English taught me a little humility about the power of expression. It taught me to harness it as well.

As my colleagues will tell you, I have a significant lack of mathematical ability; my brain is simply not wired to read equations (or musical notation - another great failing). I can do it, but I expend a great deal more effort than my math whiz friends. This puts some programming work outside my competence - algorithms especially. I understand perfectly the concept of big O, though, and with assistance, I can write highly performant code.

But... I can design, create palettes, do layout and describe workflows a fuck of a lot better than most engineers. I know enough typography to be dangerous, and I can outperform most people when it comes to interfaces.

I know the value of a good engineer. I learned it at my father's knee. But if anyone ever suggested that I fill my software shop with nothing but STEM grads, I would laugh them out of the room. No offence, all you engineers, but there's a whole raft of software design and development issues that you guys suck at.

What classes do you take?

[trout007]

What does a Liberal Arts Degree mean these days? There used to be a traditional Liberal Arts education that included theology, grammar, reasoning, rhetoric, philosophy, arithmetic,logic, geometry, music, astronomy, etc. I could see how taking these as formal courses would help someones critical thinking. But how many people with LA degrees have mastered these?

Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

In engineering critical thinking is called common sense. The article is as usual bullshit.

What place do those with liberal arts degrees have in companies such as, say, Tesla or a biomedical engineering firm?

There is some fields where linguistics is not only useful but absolutely necessary. Apart from that liberal arts place in tech companies are as customers.

Re:Gee I do not know.

[Em Adespoton]

To take the opposing view:
I know someone who got hired to do tech writing for an embedded systems company who was finishing off a combined CS and English Lit. degree, and had already generated a Liberal Arts certificate based on the cross-discipline work they needed for that.

I also remember the intense difficulty most people in CS had with writing a critical paper on ANYTHING.

I think the end result is that it doesn't really matter which degree the person has: what's important is that they can display that they can work across disciplines, present themselves well, and learn technical detail well enough to perform with it under pressure in a short period of time.

After all: which would you rather have doing a programming job: someone who got a 2.0 average in a CS degree and spent evenings and weekends playing MMORPGs, or someone with an Eng Lit. degree with a 4.0 average who has been writing Android apps as a hobby and did their major paper on the effects of digital media on 21st century literature?

Actually, depending on the programming job and the wage/contract you want to pay out, I guess it could go either way.

Re:Ya, but...

[iluvcapra]

PS. On (3), I don't think it's any accident that the government of the People's Republic of China is made up of engineers to a large extent, or that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and many Iranian politicians are engineers, or that many members of the Muslim Brotherhood (including Ayman al-Zawahiri) are medical doctors.

STEM fields give intelligent people a way of working in the world that will not fundamentally challenge their philosophy or beliefs.

Game programmers ???

[Anonymous Coward]

... English lit. grads with decent programming skills would probably make for good gamer programmers ...

Why would you ever imagine that? Game programming is one of the most technically demanding and unforgiving types of programming out there. It requires much of the detailed theory of many core computer science topics. The sort of knowledge that comes from computer science and such being your core focus, plus a lot of independent studies; the sort of knowledge that does *not* come from computer programming being a secondary interest.

Now if you want to talk about game designers then english lit may be a very good match, but game programming no. Maybe tools programming, ... internal tools for the art pipeline, installers, etc.

My experience

[Killer Instinct]

If you can get a job in the field you would like, then it doesn't matter. How you go about getting the first job isn't clear (or wasnt clear to me at first) but here is how I did it. I got a job as a very very low paid software tech (under $10/hr in the mid '90s), then met a contractor who told me about contracting. I sent out 20-30 resumes to job shops (used CE Weekly). Got my first job (1800 miles away) as a contract systems engineer. Talked my new boss out there into letting me code. 6 months later was hired as a contract software engineer back at the place I originally started as a software tech. The rest is history. Have almost 20 years experience now. And I have no colleg or university degree. So i'm not so sure it matters what degree you have, as long as you can code and understand technical problems and solve them not just patch them(engineering). A degree probably makes it 100% easier to get that first job, BUT its not the only way.. (hence the type of degree wont/doesnt matter)

Re:Um

[Matheus]

True on the response not on the original post. Look around any company that has gotten past the raw start-up phase and the balance shifts and shifts until there may or may not be even a majority engineers. Face it most companies are run and managed by non-engineers. Your entire H.R. department? Not engineers. Sales? Only if you're lucky (our last company had "Sales Engineers" to support the sales people and even most of them weren't *really engineers). Marketing, Shipping/Receiving, Maintenance, Finance... the list goes on.

Yes all of these people are paid less than us engineers but there are more of them and it's easier to get their job SO for someone looking to graduate and get hired for decent (maybe not great but certainly livable) pay then the math seems to lean toward the Liberal Arts degree unless you're going to be good at the STEM degree. You half-ass a STEM degree and you'll sit on the unemployment line looking for *that job. You half-ass an L&S degree and someone will pay you to push paperwork around because you're actually *applying for that job and there are more of them out there.

Just sayin...