
The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, Part 2: Skills and Education - samb
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/the-pmarca-guid.html
======
menloparkbum
This reads like it was written by an HR representative at Google. I'm all for
hard sciences and engineering but the most financially successful people I've
met, been friends with, or worked for all have much different backgrounds than
what he is describing.

He makes some other weird points. Economics and mathematics on their own are
almost as useless as renaissance literature. (I know, I studied mathematics
and economics)

"that's a great way to end up wanting to kill yourself when you hit 30 and you
realize you still haven't done anything with your life."

I think he's a bit off base, here. This statement describes most of the 30
something engineers I've met who didn't work at the right startup and
therefore didn't become rich. In contrast most liberal artsy people (do
artists count, or does "liberal arts" mean people who majored in something
like sociology?) seem reasonably content.

~~~
geebee
I think that Marc may have missed something here - he derides the humanities
without recognizing that the humanities are a huge part of a typical
math/science/engineering curriculum. So while Marc thinks he's comparing
"technical" students to "liberal arts" students, he's actually comparing well
rounded students (who have studied both science and liberal arts) to narrowly
focused students (who have only studied liberal arts).

I double majored in math and literature, but if I'd only done the minimum
humanities coursework for math, I still would have been forced to do a ton of
humanities. At my college (at UCSD), all students had to study:

2 years of world history and cultures 1 year of a foreign language 1 year of
upper division history. literature, or other humanities course 1 year of fine
arts or performance arts 2 courses in math, which can be fulfilled with
symbolic logic in the philosophy dept and easy statistics (without calculus)
through the psychology department. 2 courses in science, which can be
fulfilled with "physics for poets" type courses (again, no calculus)

This is regardless of major. So an english major can get through college
without ever really studying math or science in a meaningful way, whereas a
math student who does the absolute bare minimum is still going to come away
with a substantial amount of humanities coursework.

I think it's time to abolish the term "broad liberal arts education". If it's
only liberal arts, and doesn't include math and science, it isn't broad. And I
think this is what really separates the math/sci/eng students from the
humanities majors. An english who took a ton of math not reflected in his/her
degree would be just as well prepared - however, these people are very rare.

~~~
walterk
I'm not entirely sure what the humanities requirements amount to at UCSD, but
at Berkeley I do not believe that the minimum humanities requirements
(typically fulfilled by intro courses) constituted a particularly strong dose
of humanities, much as the math/science requirements don't constitute a
particularly strong dose of math/science. In both cases, you can get away with
not getting very in depth at all, and often students who are biased one way or
the other are more likely to slack off in the classes they're not biased
towards and/or forget them as soon as they're done with them. So there's
simply no guarantee of well-roundedness either way.

The best thing, in my opinion, is to get at least a minor, with either the
minor or the major being in a humanities or math/science/engineering field. If
you just want to get a job doing software engineering or some such, you'll
probably have to make the technical field your major, but a strong minor in
comp sci can be far more formidable a programmer than many a CS major.

If I had things my way, I would actually insist on undergrads having to major
in the humanities, as I'm too familiar with CS majors graduating with an
impoverished understanding of society and culture and a lack of critical
perspective, often precisely because they did not consider their humanities
classes to be "real" classes. The more I learn, the more I'm amazed that what
I've learned is somehow considered "optional" by the rest of the populace.
Democracies are only as smart as their ruling majority, and as much of the
realm of smart decision making in national and international affairs is
dominated by social/cultural knowledge and perceptiveness as by technical
knowledge, if not more. (Though to separate the two this way is admittedly
artificial.) Much the same applies to businesses.

In an ideal world, _every_ undergrad has to double major, one in humanities,
the other in math/sci/engineering. And I'm not even sure that the ideal is so
difficult to achieve or unreasonable to demand.

------
mhartl
> However, most of the people who have a huge impact on the world, outside of
> pure research and education, do not have PhD's. Draw from that whatever
> conclusion you think makes sense.

My conclusion is that Marc is being a bit sloppy here. Like 75% of the Y
Combinator partners, I have a Ph.D.---and I think graduate (and, indeed,
undergraduate) degrees are overrated. But given the small percentage of Ph.D.s
even among technical people, it would be very surprising if _most_ people
having a high impact had them. More relevant is to ask whether Ph.D.s have
relatively more impact than those without doctoral degrees. I don't know the
answer, but I think it's a more interesting question.

~~~
auferstehung
Marc is telling it like it is, even if it is a little difficult to hear.

A Ph.D. is a huge opportunity cost with an extraordinarily high risk/reward
ratio. I have often had undergraduates ask me if they should pursue a Ph.D. I
first ask them if it is their desire to teach at a research university. This
desire is a little like becoming an NBA player especially in certain technical
fields like physics. A horde of Ph.D. candidates is good for tenured
Professors and research universities, but not necessarily for the students.
Post-doc hell is left as an excercise for the reader.

If they don't have a burning desire to be a professor or happen to dislike
trees, I don't really see the point of a Ph.D. I tell them to at least take a
hard look at the costs of their decision either way: real financial,
opportunity, time, etc. An objective tally will rarely be in favor of a Ph.D.

~~~
mhartl
I share Marc's (and your) skepticism about the value of a Ph.D., which is part
of why I said that graduate degrees are overrated. I also counsel
undergraduates to consider the large opportunity costs of graduate school. But
I was taking issue with the sloppiness of the statement " _most_ of the people
who have a huge impact on the world . . . do not have PhD's", which would seem
to be true whether or not having a Ph.D. is particularly valuable. It's sort
of like saying " _most_ of the people who have a huge impact on the world are
not left-handed". Well, yes, but that's true even if you replace "the world"
with "baseball", and yet lefties have _proportionally_ more impact in baseball
despite still being a minority. The question is, can the same be said of
Ph.D.s (in the world, I mean, not in baseball)?

------
snifty
> Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world
> armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife. Don't miss that
> opportunity because of some fuzzy romanticized view of liberal arts
> broadening your horizons -- that's a great way to end up wanting to kill
> yourself when you hit 30 and you realize you still haven't done anything
> with your life.

Jesus, what a prick.

~~~
neilk
Unfortunately, he's right.

This isn't so much because engineering is great, or the only way to make your
mark on the world. The problem is that today's arts faculties just suck. It's
possible to graduate knowing things that _only_ matter within the walls of the
university, and you may not realize this until the very last minute.

That said, it's possible to graduate from engineering schools and not have a
clue about history, current events, different sorts of people, what matters in
life, and the fact that one cannot wear socks with sandals. You may not be
starving, and you may be in a sense contributing to society more than many
artists, but you may never have really stretched your own mind -- merely let
your geek tendencies do their thing.

I think the best possible thing to do in university is to take the hard
science courses, and then supplement them with intense and challenging arts
courses. The ones where you have to do learn some serious art history, or do
some sort of performance. This is the best of both worlds.

~~~
Goladus
One recommendation I have (in spite of PG's essay) is that if you take a
course in Classics or "Western Humanities" as it was called at my college,
take it from a Philosophy professor.

I might have just been lucky, but they always had the most interesting
discussion and criticism of the stuff we were reading. One of the best
discussions about the scientific method I've ever had came from in a
Humanities class taught by a philosophy prof. One of the first things we read
was Galileo's letters on sunspots. Later in the semester we demonstrated how
Freud's theories were completely unscientific (because they were
unfalsifiable/untestable). I actually never _really_ understood the difference
between axioms and theorems until I took that class. I mean, I knew vaguely
that an axiom was a rule and a theorem was a confirmed hypothesis, but the
fact that axioms are essentially arbitrary never really sunk in. In actual
science classes I was always too busy learning details to think about the
abstract stuff.

------
bmaier
> Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world
> armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife. Don't miss that
> opportunity because of some fuzzy romanticized view of liberal arts
> broadening your horizons -- that's a great way to end up wanting to kill
> yourself when you hit 30 and you realize you still haven't done anything
> with your life.

The problem with this entire line of thinking is that sure having an assault
rifle is great but it doesn't do much good if you don't have any context to
know where to point it.

Think of a technical skill or degree as the lens through which you focus a
broader education.

The broader education allows you do apply technical solutions to non-technical
problems and may even help you come up with that "big idea".

Look at PG, he seems to be doing pretty well on both accounts (undergrad
liberal arts degree, grad technical degree).

------
run4yourlives
I liked the first one, but I must say I'm a little disappointed that there is
an assumption that college is a needed experience. Granted, it is in most
cases, but - especially for entrepreneurs - it's not always the only way to
success.

~~~
zach
I think the assumption is that, without a degree, you will not be able to find
equivalent experience from which you can draw out the same "how to think like
an engineer" perspective.

Who would suggest skipping college? Yet, if you have a clearly great
opportunity lined up, it's not a bad thing to leave. And if you get yourself
kicked out midterm like I did, you have great motivation to make something
happen in the non-college world. When I was at college, there were many
stories of guys who flunked out and ended up doing interesting things. Then I
became one!

~~~
rms
I think I have the "how to think like an engineer" mentality already, two and
and a half years in. Does this mean I can quit now?

~~~
geebee
I know you're kind of joking here, but the answer appears to be "yes", you
probably could get away with quitting school. It's not like law or medicine
where you're useless without the actual degree. Dropping out of whatever
degree program you're in seems to be a time honored way to the top in the high
tech world (gates, jobs, ellison, allen, dell...)

But do you really want to take that risk? Nobody gets to the top without
finishing _something_. Maybe part of "thinking like an engineer" involves
wrapping it all up.

~~~
nostrademons
That was my reasoning for finishing college, and in hindsight was probably the
right choice. Remember that Gates, Allen, Jobs, and Dell had all started and
run profitable businesses in high school (traffic counters, payroll software,
blue boxes, and stamps, respectively). If you have that kind of background,
you really don't need college. If you don't, you might want to build it up
before attempting a startup.

------
myoung8
For what it's worth, very few of the very succesfull people I know have an
engineering degree. Many have an MBA or JD, though.

~~~
Goladus
Many of the successful people I know do have an engineering degree. Of the
first four I can think of, there are two engineers, one MBA, and one MD.

------
kingkongrevenge
> a great way to end up wanting to kill yourself

This line is kinda interesting because the type-A personality he projects
matches the profile of people who kill themselves when faced with a major
setback.

I really cringe at his "change the world or you're a loser" pep talk bits.
Chill out, man.

I think the life experience of guys like this makes their prognostications on
the next 20 years useless. His formative career experiences happened during a
historically unprecedented and continuous boom. Maybe I'm a paranoid nut, but
severe and long lasting recessions and broken dreams are way more the norm
than the last 20 years would indicate. The economy could blow up tomorrow and
we could all be picking lettuce for the next eight years. Are you going to
kill yourself over it?

Is it really worth uprooting from a region where you have deep ties for a
career opportunity? Careers are ephemeral. Blood ties might keep you alive
when the going gets rough.

