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Do Tech Firms Really Want Liberal Arts Majors?
Nerval's Lobster writes: Not too long ago, a Forbes writer declared that a liberal arts degree had "become tech's hottest ticket." At so-called 'disruptive juggernauts' such as Facebook and Uber, George Anders wrote, 'the war for talent' had moved into non-technical realms such as marketing and sales. While there's undoubtedly some truth to Anders's thesis, technology recruiters and executives aren't seeing any less demand for strong technical skills in a wide variety of roles (Dice link). When there's a need for tech professionals with 'soft skills,' at least one recruiter just recruits computer-science majors from liberal arts schools, figuring those recruits will be more 'well-rounded.' To be clear, Forbes doesn't suggest that IT employers have begun mixing liberal-arts graduates into their technical teams; the article talks more about those graduates ending up in supporting roles such as sales and marketing, or else becoming intermediaries who translate the customer's product requirements into engineering solutions. But nobody should think that a strong technical background isn't as valued as ever throughout tech companies.
Because the more of these people that enter the tech field the sooner they can start answering the phones for "Helpdesk, how can I help you?" and have 0 chance of them leaving that career path due to their complete and utter lack of technical aptitude. This frees those people who have tech skills to better put to use instead of answering the damn phone from users who still can't figure out how to turn on Wifi on their laptop.
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I've always had an interest in computers and electronics as a kid, but I mostly avoided computers during my first tour through college. I managed to get an internship through a roommate to test software. After my contract was up six months later, I became a video game tester and lead tester for the next six years. I went back to college to learn computer programming and made the college president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major. I've been doing IT support contract work for the last ten years. Now I'm doing computer security. Sometimes the best people to hire are the ones who take their time finding out what they want to do.
Your generalization of liberal arts graduates is almost as bad as your idea of an ideal workplace.
In a productive workplace the workers aren't drones that perform simple tasks as they are ordered from the top down. You end up with a CEO that knows nothing about technology deciding what technology to use on a product that has no value and doesn't work.
In a real productive environment there is open communication between all employees. People higher up explain problems they want to solve to the technical people and the technical people come up with ways to solve for the problem the other people didn't even know existed. Then they collaborate and decide what the best solution is. This way you solve the actual problem and do it in the most efficient way possible.
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Yeah, why is that engineering majors need art history to be well rounded but art history majors don't need vector calculus for the same reason?