
Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities - amahadik
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/want_innovative_thinking_hire.html
======
onan_barbarian
If I remember correctly, I believe IBM used to apply this reasoning back in
the 1980s.

Having done humanities subjects as well as CS, I would say that the workload
was quite potentially similar in difficulty and sophistication and would
likely stand people in good stead, as the article says... IF you did the
readings for the humanities courses, which quite a number of people doing a
Bachelor of Arts really obviously didn't. It was obvious you could skate by
with the equivalent of a B- or C+ while doing 15 hours a week total work,
which usually inspired great quantities of rage and disdain from the
engineering/science students.

------
jacques_chester
Here's something I learnt from the humanities: distinguishing between
_necessary_ and _sufficient_ causes of events.

Steve Jobs taking a calligraphy class was _necessary_ , but not _sufficient_ ,
to create the Macintosh. He still needed a team of those tedious non-
humanities folks -- not least of whom was Woz -- for Apple to succeed.

Bill Gates and Zuckerberg had educations rich in the humanities. But that was
not enough: they also had a deep background in actual programming.

The humanities _by themselves_ are not enough. You need the rubber as well as
the road.

~~~
rdouble
In the case of all those mentioned it seems like what you want to do is drop
out of college entirely.

Related, apple was staffed by total weirdos for its first 8-10 years, people
who neither fit the stereotype of engineer or humanities major. See any
article at folklore.org

~~~
jacques_chester
> In the case of all those mentioned it seems like what you want to do is drop
> out of college entirely.

I picked examples that I'm familiar with. In another field I'm confident that
the pattern repeats -- that humanities is an edge but not a base.

Slightly OT -- one of my dreams upon makin' bacon is to go here for a few
years: <http://stjohnscollege.edu/>

