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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.
We don't generally hate liberal arts ... in this case we just have no idea of why tech firms would be hiring people without tech skills.
Of course, in a browser with javascript disabled, the Forbes article renders as the oh-so-poetic "false", and I don't give a damn enough to click the dice link.
So, TFA is pretty much non-existent as far as I'm concerned, and it's mostly yet another article submitted by that Lobster guy which links to dice. At this point I just assume he works for dice but refuses to mention that/
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No.
As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position, nor would their degree count for anything more than a HS diploma when hiring for a non-tech position. Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems. They have also screwed up the one major life decision they have made so far: Their college major.
Also, I have no interest whatsoever in hiring "well-rounded" employees. They may be better people, and engage in interesting conversation at the water cooler, but they are not better employees, and are not going to add as much to the bottom line as a workaholic nerd with no social life.
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.
But if they run out of h1-bs they'll settle. A college degree is a quick n dirty way to weed out the unstable. At the very least you know the were reliable enough to make it through a four year degree Companies don't give a shit about your back story.
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I have a Masters in history and also a programming degree. So if you have any openings for breaking-the-paradigm-new-perspectives-shaking-things-up managers, I'm your man!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Nor will they come in one morning with a shotgun and shoot the place up.
The worst mass shooting in US History was by an English major.
I just have a reflexive eye roll. My doctor says there's nothing he can do about that.
Well rounded==absolutely no technical background.
Who gets to decide what 'well rounded' means? I took far more history than history majors took science. English as well.
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I'm a tech person who generally tries to avoid sales people as much as possible, but I'd never in a million years suggest that sales is a "supporting role". If it were not for the sales staff where I work, I'd have no income, and consequently be living in a van down by the river. The engineering staff knows how to do a lot of great stuff, but getting the foot in the door at a customer and then getting them to buy our product isn't one of them. There are other departments a company might be able to get by without, but sales isn't one of them.
Without a product, you can't sell anything.
Without a sales, you don't have income.
Without income, you can't pay the people who make the product.
(Repeat)
As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position
As a programmer for ten years, I would definitely hire a liberal arts major for a programming position. After working alongside several and interviewing others, I have to echo the professor who wonders if his students have any kind of taste.
They may know the syntax. In fact anyone can learn that in a couple of weeks. What I keep running into, though, are programmers who can't program their way out of a paper bag, who would stare at me blankly if I quoted Brian Kernighan when he said "Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming."
Actually lately it seems a liberal arts major is about as likely as a science major to know anything about design. But I will tell you that I would hire a gifted musician, painter, or journalist that shows the seed of understanding good design, over a humdrum programmer who's like, "If it runs it's good."
He got an MS in Rhetoric and then worked in various office admins roles for a while. Then he got a job writing documentation. This expanded over time to requirements gathering and test planning. All of which requires more of an ability to communicate with people both on the technical and non-technical side of the process.
So don't discount it. LA majors can contribute if they are given the correct jobs and allowed to grow into them.
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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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The problem is there isn't a real standard as far as a liberal arts education is concerned. This wasn't always the case. There used to be a very rigorous coursework every bit as demanding as technical degrees. Math, science, music, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, anatomy, etc. the problem started when student loans became available from the government. There are a whole bunch of new students that have a bunch of money but no business in college. You can't place them in technical degrees because there are standards schools need to meet. So liberal arts was expanded and dumbed down at some schools to get all of this new money. There are still some great liberal arts programs out there but you better do your research so you aren't wasting your time and money.
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Every single employee of your company is either an engineer or high-school grad? (Or a liberal arts major paid like a minimum-wage drone.)
I seriously doubt that.
And if you think liberal arts majors aren't trained to think logically, I don't know what to tell you. A decent liberal arts program most certainly covers that, just like any decent engineering program has some soft-skills in there.
Just because something is taught out of 'Arts and Sciences' does not make it a 'liberal art'. Much as LA types want to claim them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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?
As a tech employer, I would not hire a liberal arts major for a technical position, nor would their degree count for anything more than a HS diploma when hiring for a non-tech position. Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems. They have also screwed up the one major life decision they have made so far: Their college major.
Also, I have no interest whatsoever in hiring "well-rounded" employees. They may be better people, and engage in interesting conversation at the water cooler, but they are not better employees, and are not going to add as much to the bottom line as a workaholic nerd with no social life.
Where to even begin. There is NO correlation between one's major, and one's social life. English Majors are just as likely to be closeted freaks as Math or CS majors. There is a correlation between the work produced by those that can think creatively and those that are just code monkeys. If you run a sweat shop, that's your business. But for most industries, having soft skills are critical to being able to do your job well. Most of the best coders I've ever worked with were not CS majors, although a few were. One was even a Philosophy PhD. Gasp. Also, judging people positively because they chose college to be job training instead of as a time to expand one's education is onerous, to say the least.
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No, the worst mass shooting in US history was by the sons of farmers, ranchers and merchants.
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Liberal arts majors have not been trained to think logically and solve problems.
I took symbolic logic in the philosophy department. There was lots of logic in other philosophy classes. Not so much solving problems, maybe, but lots of shooting down bad ideas.
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Hey now, Cheney was responsible for the best public shooting in America - he shot a lawyer in the face with a shotgun. Props where they're due!
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Also, Forbes looks like a spinning circle without Javascript enabled, so that's two strikes.
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