I agree 100% with academic work being made more meaningful. In an effort to make student work less time wasting I have them write up sections for Wikipedia instead of doing a paper that I only read. My class is about library history so over the past decade thousands of facts about library history have been added and many students have continued to edit. Anyone teaching should find a way to make the work of students mean more.
I loved this article, Klaus. The most successful person I know (my brother, who is so senior that he reports to the CEO of a huge retail corporation that is not Walmart but is the other one) holds a BA from an undistinguished public university, and no other degrees or credentials. He doesn’t need them--he learned everything he knows on the job, plus, he is extraordinarily talented at business--and thankfully his company accepts the evidence of what he has accomplished and doesn’t require him to get needless credentials.
My husband is the other extremely successful and accomplished person with the “wrong” credentials (a BA in Russian literature and a PhD in applied mathematics). When he interviewed for his first job out of his post-doc in neuroscience, he was asked why he was qualified, given that the job used statistics, which he had never studied. My husband’s response was epic: “This problem has existed for more than twenty years, and the statistics to solve the problem has been around for longer than that. But it wasn’t a statistician who solved the problem. It was me. I solved it. And that’s why you should hire me.” He got the job.
Your point about the badness of bad stuff is baked into us: it’s been borne out by psychological testing. Traders remember losses longer than they remember similar-sized gains. I think our central nervous system evolved to be more attuned to threats, since survival is the first priority. Not happiness.
Excellent piece Klaus! This is something I think about a lot.
I wonder how much this culture its actually hitting our prosperity as an entire civilisation: large companies like this are essentially rentiers at this point. They gain rents from their existing size while they waste vast amounts of money through unconscious cultural process (and I suspect the impact of regulation: which large companies will sometimes lobby against... but isn't a problem for their employees as it creates more non-productive roles).
Perhaps its an inevitable result of complex organisations? The more distant you are from what creates value, the harder it becomes to correctly perceive what is creating value. So other processes increasingly take the wheel.
Have you read the Managerial Revolution? I suspect that would be an interesting read in this regard.
I agree 100% with academic work being made more meaningful. In an effort to make student work less time wasting I have them write up sections for Wikipedia instead of doing a paper that I only read. My class is about library history so over the past decade thousands of facts about library history have been added and many students have continued to edit. Anyone teaching should find a way to make the work of students mean more.
I loved this article, Klaus. The most successful person I know (my brother, who is so senior that he reports to the CEO of a huge retail corporation that is not Walmart but is the other one) holds a BA from an undistinguished public university, and no other degrees or credentials. He doesn’t need them--he learned everything he knows on the job, plus, he is extraordinarily talented at business--and thankfully his company accepts the evidence of what he has accomplished and doesn’t require him to get needless credentials.
My husband is the other extremely successful and accomplished person with the “wrong” credentials (a BA in Russian literature and a PhD in applied mathematics). When he interviewed for his first job out of his post-doc in neuroscience, he was asked why he was qualified, given that the job used statistics, which he had never studied. My husband’s response was epic: “This problem has existed for more than twenty years, and the statistics to solve the problem has been around for longer than that. But it wasn’t a statistician who solved the problem. It was me. I solved it. And that’s why you should hire me.” He got the job.
Your point about the badness of bad stuff is baked into us: it’s been borne out by psychological testing. Traders remember losses longer than they remember similar-sized gains. I think our central nervous system evolved to be more attuned to threats, since survival is the first priority. Not happiness.
Excellent piece Klaus! This is something I think about a lot.
I wonder how much this culture its actually hitting our prosperity as an entire civilisation: large companies like this are essentially rentiers at this point. They gain rents from their existing size while they waste vast amounts of money through unconscious cultural process (and I suspect the impact of regulation: which large companies will sometimes lobby against... but isn't a problem for their employees as it creates more non-productive roles).
Perhaps its an inevitable result of complex organisations? The more distant you are from what creates value, the harder it becomes to correctly perceive what is creating value. So other processes increasingly take the wheel.
Have you read the Managerial Revolution? I suspect that would be an interesting read in this regard.
Appreciate the comment. No I haven't though I'll give it a look. Sounds right up my alley through. "Disciplined minds" is also on my list.