Anyone read this book? It sounds interesting but I’m not sure I’m interested enough to buy it.
ETA forgot link: https://www.amazon.com/Fuzzy-Techie-Liberal-Digital-World-ebook/dp/B01I4FPMGO/
I came across the book in this article - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-these-humanities-graduates-are-finding-jobs-in-silicon-valley which discusses liberal artsy/humanities grads working in or running tech companies. An interesting and quick read.
Well, maybe people who are well versed in both tech and fuzzy but not just in fuzzy. I think the book just wants to make the fuzzies feel better. I actually think too many fuzzies don’t try to learn about tech area when they should. This is one reason I am glad my kid is going to Stanford where he will be taking some well known beginning intro Comp Sci — as a Pass/Fail if he has to.
@websensation - it does list tech company founder/CEOs who aren’t techie.
But I agree “fuzzies” do have to develop some tech ability or at least understanding, as techies need to develop some fuzzy skills.
I bet those CEOs had some familiarity in tech stuff though. I see many fuzzies complaining about techies without trying to learn the other side. I am telling my non-techie kid at Stanford to learn from all the techies around him.
Currently reading it on my Kindle. I was a fuzzy and my husband and three sons are techies.
Certainly there are people like product owners, marketing people, and business analysts in the tech world who don’t have STEM backgrounds. They aren’t generally paid as well as the core CS or IT people are. But still can get reasonable jobs.
There is a good living to be made in the seam between tech and the rest of the world. I know because I’ve been exploiting it for 30+ years. Someone who can translate between the groups and direct traffic for both is very valuable. But I did start on the tech side, with the equivalent of a CS minor.
But fuzzies ruling the digital world? I think that is not reality.
Uh, I don’t think so. Two of the three co-founders of PayPal were Comp Sci. Only Peter Thiel was a non-STEM; he majored in Philosophy, earned a JD and became a securities lawyer and then investor.
I don’t like the term “fuzzies.” If it doesn’t make you think of comfy slippers and a bathrobe (i.e., sitting around,) it’s a word for unclear thinking. No, haven’t read the book. Nor would I call acute analytical skills “soft skills.” Yikes.
What some miss is that non techies can pick up enough to work with products and development, tech people and more. I agree with @intparent on mucg, but not the underpaid part. Quality is quality. And of course “fuzzies” will take part in ruling the digital world. Not all techies can bridge the gap between conceptual and getting an idea sold. Sold to those “fuzzies” out there who’ll use a product. Or not.
Are you saying people with non-tech backgrounds on average match the salaries of the STEM educated workers today? Show me the numbers, because I’m skeptical. Especially if you take out business majors, who also do pretty well in earnings.
Intparent. They can earn the same high salaries. Not for being a lowly employee. Not for sleepwalking through their jobs. You said, “…product owners, marketing people, and business analysts in the tech world who don’t have STEM backgrounds.” I’d throw in sales, tech writers, contract negotiators, and more. Legal, advertising, MBAs. These folks need a tech affinity, not the actual ability to get that rocket to the moon or calculate lift under an airplane wing.
You referred to those who work the “seam” or translate among groups. I don’t think we can assume the best of those folks are necessarily underpaid. IME, it’s a vital skill. (I did that, too.)
This isn’t all about inflated SV salaries. That’s all.
I founded a small Internet company and know many other persons who founded similar small companies in the industry, as well as some of the “Paypal Mafia” people. It’s been my experience that there is a fuzzy/techie division in owners of this type of company. The “fuzzy” owners often run the company like a traditional CEO or angel investor. They usually don’t do much tech related stuff themselves. Instead they hire people from a variety of industries to implement their ideas and usually have a few key “techie” employees that they trust and place great value in, often crediting them with the success of their company. In some cases, they are little more than schedule keepers in tech discussions and let the employees they trust handle it.
In contrast, the "techy’ owners tend to be more actively involved in the actual coding, doing a lot of the updates personally, and in many cases are largely responsible for the core technology. In the early stages of the company, they may be the only full time employees, which can greatly reduce initial costs. They tend to have more intelligent discussions with the tech employees and more actively work together, having more of direct role in changing the direction of the tech and implementing ideas.
Both approaches can be successful. It’s easy to hire people to create websites like the ones mentioned in the quote above, if you have a sufficient cash/investment/funding, regardless of your college major. However, if you are interested in starting a SV type tech company, I think it helps to have a background related to the core technology of that company.
Also many of the founders of the companies listed above are not traditional “fuzzies.” For example, the founders of LinkedIn are below. I guess it counts as the founders being “fuzzies” if 1 of the 5 does not have degrees in tech fields and instead presumably learned the skills needed for his work as a web designer on his own?
Eric Thich Vi Ly – Dropped out of PhD in Computer Science at Stanford
Konstantin Guericke – BS and MS in Engineering fields at Stanford
Reid Hoffman – BS in Cognitive Science and Symbolic Systems at Stanford
Jean-Luc Vaillant – Studied Telecommunications and Networks at Télécom ParisTech
Allen Blue – BA in Drama and English at Stanford, Worked as web designer for 7 years prior to LinkedIn
I guess it depends how you define success. Running a company, a division, or even a team requires something that both techies and fuzzies need…Leadership Skills. One has to be able to communicate the big picture all the way down to the lower levels, make sure everyone knows what is expected of them, and make sure they have the tools to accomplish the goal. In a small company it may be direct oversight. In a large company much will be delegated.
Communication (in all forms) is key. There are plenty of techies and fuzzies who do this well. There are plenty of both who struggle with it and they will never get past a certain level.
A big component of leadership comes from “buy in”. If they don’t buy in, you’re leading a group to nowhere. For tech based companies, I assume a certain level of knowledge and experience helps create that buy in. Know many people with STEM backgrounds who are company leaders. They don’t have anything to do with line STEM jobs anymore. That stopped a few years after they got their start. They run businesses but they had enough time in the trenches to understand the processes, the language, the environment, etc.
I agree with the previous posters:
-I started going through the backgrounds of the companies listed as examples. Have yet to find one that doesn’t have one founder that is a techie. So the premise is false to begin with and the title is inaccurate and set up as click bait.
-EVERYONE needs some technical skills these days and the LACs that are not teaching that are doing their students a great disservice. No matter the major or career (doctors, lawyers, writers, historians, academia, pharma, scientific research, business - you name it - tech skills are required to do the job). That doesn’t happen on the tech side of college education because of mandatory distribution requirements at almost every school in this country.
-I work as a ‘translator’ like @intparent. I experience equal frustration with both the coders who don’t know what I’m talking about unless explicitly spec’ed out in great technical detail and business people with zero technical skills who think we can conjure up some magic application quickly and easily that will solve all their technical problems. Some of these business people are young - in their 30s and 40s - and come with fancy LAC backgrounds, but still cannot conceptualize “how stuff works” in IT.
In an increasingly technology driven world, the society needs both sets of skills. However, techies would have an advantage because it’s generally easier for some of them to gain skills on the other side than fuzzies. However, fuzzies who are well-versed in technologies can add significant value.
Looking further out, though, technologies are likely to disrupt many professions, especially at the low end of the food chain, including ones occupied by many techies.
^ very important point. Essential skills will certainly include client facing , relationship driven, consultative skills as AI disrupts and further commoditizes the planet. Real value creation will be in the reasoning on top of the automation and in breakthrough technologies.
My D1, who is a fuzzy, just spent about 18 months working in a position with an IT related division of her consulting company. She managed, but it was pretty obvious to her that without a stronger tech background she wasn’t really going to thrive career wise in that division. It was a valuable career experience for her, I suspect, but I think she was wise to move to a more product focused division a few months ago. She was never going to be able to have a robust, in depth conversation with CIO about security risks or moving to the cloud, for example.
I think there is great value in having a grounding in both areas as there is great opportunity for synergy. However, one of the biggest mistakes I see people making in today’s world is attempting to commoditize technical talent. You will see that companies that do this often are falling behind in the digital world and are not taken seriously by fresh top technical talent.
This actually appears to be the point of the book (I haven’t read it, just the amazon page and some reviews). That techies need fuzzy skills and the reverse, but also that these people need each other.
Some examples in the article i linked in the OP -
A former professional ballerina teaching a robot how to move gracefully so it appeals more to people who might buy it/work with it/whatever. This ballerina is also a PhD engineering student but her undergrad degree was a double of Dance and Business. (Which is interesting in and of itself, I didn’t know you could do a PhD in engineering without any engineering background).
An art history major who oversees a few hundred stylists at Stitchfix - the algorithm does some of the work but the stylists’ judgement is apparently critical.
Slack’s head of “Search Learning” is an English grad who says her English skills help her figure out what people want when they search and that guides development.
But these “fuzzy” college major people do not eschew tech skills, not at all. The Slack one -
I hate when this lines up so one side “has to” be better than the other. It takes all sorts. Face it, you can’t even get by without a great AA who can handle admin urgencies.
In my role between the sides, I came as a freaking social sci major. But my early work experience had been on the tech side. Better put: with the sort of analytical thinking tech requires, big and small thinking, how the heck do we solve this problem NOW and forever. How do we avoid it, next time. I loved it. My kiddo, the classics major is following much the same path. Last person you’d guess would turn out to be skilled and savvy with this. But she can think and learn, make accurate short and long term decisions, make clients like her, and gets both the big and small pictures. Took only one stem class in college.
Have the faith, friends. I couldn’t make the rocket go up, but my clients who did got the comm links they needed.
On another note, I was looking at the guys who created Rottentomatoes. Yes, some tech. But the first was into computer graphics and game/web design. You don’t create well without knowing your audience. A lot of engineering is the incremental. Someone has to sit back and come up with the rest of the picture.