What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

There's so much to say here about the incompetence of the OP that it's better to write a long blog post about it...so I'll just leave it at this.

First of all, check out the source material, which is this Thomas Friedman column:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-ho...

The OP is suggesting that the Google exec doesn't value the skills in the humanities departments. This is not even remotely true. Read the Friedman column for yourself:

> Are the liberal arts still important?

> > They are “phenomenally important,” he said, especially when you combine them with other disciplines. “Ten years ago behavioral economics was rarely referenced. But [then] you apply social science to economics and suddenly there’s this whole new field. I think a lot about how the most interesting things are happening at the intersection of two fields.

So basically, the OP basis for argument is a little off-kilter. But where the OP is incredibly wrong is his interpretation of the following:

> I told that student they are much better off being a B student in computer science than an A+ student in English because it signals a rigor in your thinking and a more challenging course load.

The OP is aggreieved because he interprets Bock's statement as saying that English doesn't have the same critical thinking skills as computer science. Bock is not saying that at all, he is saying to a student that leaving comsci, because the courses are too challenging, is a bad idea, and that he/she shouldn't prize an A in an "easier" curriculum over a B in computer science, because the value of a grade is not the only measure of skills valuable to Google.

What's really important here is the word that Bock uses: "rigor". I'll refer to the definition that Google's search engine brings up:

> the quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate.

The OP interprets "rigor" as being "hard" or "challenging." But Bock is more likely referring to the importance of accuracy and the more rigidly testable questions in a typical computer science curriculum versus an English curriculum. Bock does not at all talk about the intellectual challenge of English versus Computer Science.

The fact that a professor has such a skewed, and in my opinion, wrong interpretation of not just Bock's statement, but of the English word "rigor" is itself a testament to the lack of "rigor"...or "stiffness" in how English is evaluated.

I was an English major in undergrad and grad school and I see these arguments all the time. I learned a great deal in my university career, and much of what I learned in the humanities took real intellectual curiosity, hard work, and deep thinking. You're not going to put together a real, publishable work by copy and pasting work from Stackoverflow, not in a master level English course. And let's be honest, the majority of CS students are lazy and incompetent, just like the majority of all students in all majors. Sure, you get some truly brilliant students that come along, but most of them never really produce anything of value. And most engineers, talented as they may be at slinging code and doing the lambda calculus, are pitiful communicators and can barely write a coherent sentence.

For me, the problem in English class was that "good" writing was very subjective. It always seemed as if the goal was to impress the teacher. I've only had one English teacher in my life who I felt gave me concrete instruction about how to write effectively (shout out to Dr. Cross!). The technical writing course I took in college was also somewhat beneficial.

In mathematics, there are problems and there are solutions. That is much more logical to me.

> They were simply unprepared for the torrent of proofs, deductions, tautologies, De Morgan's laws, etc.

All of which I never see used in a professional capacity for the vast majority of software developers.

What I do see used quite often is the ability to communicate to customers or other engineers in a clear, succinct and enjoyable manner using the English language.

Bock and the author both miss the same point: the thing that helps you learn to think in a rigorous way is to study something that does not come naturally to you.

I see it as the difference between learning a new skill and practicing an existing one. The former forces you to focus completely, while the latter tolerates inattention.