Re: [SAGE] Computer Sciences degrees in IT

[Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>]

At 10:05 AM -0400 3/25/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall quoted Dave Close:

>>  Mastering technology takes a degree of interest, whereas everyone deals
>>  with business as part of life. That casual exposure can, for someone who
>>  pays attention, provide a grounding in the subject.
>
>  I agree to a certain extent.  Yet I believe the statistic for small
>  businesses closing is something like 50% in the first five years of
>  their existence.  If business and finance were something that people can
>  pick up by "casual exposure", then a lot of people seem to be wearing
>  sunscreen.

I am convinced that to be really successful in an area requires 
talent.  A certain level of skill and knowledge can be picked up by 
anyone (to the degree they're willing to learn them), but talent 
can't be taught or learned.  And someone who has talent will always 
do better in a given area than someone who doesn't, if they have 
comparable skills and knowledge.  Many times, the person who has 
better talent will do much better than the person who doesn't, even 
if the second person has significantly better skills & knowledge -- 
talent really is that important.

I am also convinced that being good in business will require certain 
types of talent, skills, and knowledge, and being good in technical 
fields will tend to require different types of talent, skills, and 
knowledge.  So, you can't just take a good techie and expect that 
s/he will naturally be a good business person, just because they have 
good technical talent.  If they don't have the necessary business 
talent, then they're going to find it much harder to succeed, even if 
they do have the drive to overcome their lack of talent and replace 
that with skills and knowledge.


The classic example here was given to me by Eric Allman.  He said 
that one of the very smartest things he ever did was to choose 
someone else to be the President and CEO of his company.  When he saw 
what this guy was doing naturally, he knew that these were things he 
never would have thought to do if he were trying to fill that job 
himself.  It's not that he couldn't have done them, it's that he 
never would have thought to do them.

They've gone through at least two or three CEOs, but Eric is still 
there, and I have to believe that he feels the same way about this 
situation now as he did then.


Hell, techies usually don't even make good managers, much less good 
business people.  I don't know why anyone on earth would expect them 
to be good at everything, just because they're good at technical 
things, and may understand heavy math and deep physics.  Not 
everything can be solved with mathematical equations.  Not everything 
has a logical answer.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>