Re: [SAGE] Computer Sciences degrees in IT

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 08:26:49PM -0500, Brad Knowles wrote:
> 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.

This is absolutely true.  However, it's not a matter of whether or not
you can make a good techie into a good business person.  It's a
question of whether or not possessing a certain amount of business
knowledge is useful to a techie's career.  I can state quite
authoratatively that much of my sucess in my profession as a technical
person is due to the fact that I have a fair amount of the knowledge
and basic skills to be a business person.  

I might make a horrible CEO, or at least not be as successful as an
executive as what I am as a technical architect and kernel programmer.
But because of my knowledge and skills, I can evaluate a potential
employer by reading their 10Q filings and balance sheets, I can look
at a contract and know have a good sense of what is at stake before
calling in a lawyer (which I will do most of the time, and certainly
for anything important), I can speak to business people in their
language and have some idea of their concerns and motivations.

The one other thing that I would add that is probably the most
important skill or "talent" is intellectual curiosity, and this apply
for almost any kind of non-exempt (salaried) job (including that of
being the president of the United States :-/).  I was browsing through
the bookstoore today, and came across a book on how to write good
screenplays, and a book about the nuts and bolts of being an artist in
the music industry.  How many of us rail on about the RIAA and
copyright issues?  How many of us have bothered to learn about what
it's like to be a music artist in this day and age?  

One of the most important things to learn while in college is that
learning is fun, and to learn how to learn, and to get exposed to
things other than what you think is your primary passion.  It will
allow you to have a much richer life, and a much more successfull
career, IMHO.

					- Ted