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The diminishing half-life of knowledge

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Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#71

Post by zaptheimpaler »

jacquesm wrote: post #49

It's not so much the knowledge itself that has a half-life (unless it is front-end tech knowledge), but the ability to monetize knowledge. You used to be able to make a career out of some niche bit of knowledge but those days are over. You need to work hard just to stay current, in almost every field and that is as much a trend driven by technology as it is driven by the fact that there are so many people of working…

Credibly signalling that you do have some bit of knowledge is hard too. Its easy to learn a lot on your own today but the only widely valid signals are academic credentials or past experience.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#72

Post by zaptheimpaler »

7thaccount wrote: post #42
marcosdumay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One really important issue with your first point is that everybody hiring is filtering by experience in SaaS, framework, and as a last resort, language. Nobody is searching for knowledge of the fundamentals. But anyway, my take is that the problem the article is describing is caused by the existence of way too many fundamentals that can't all be practiced.

Both your comment and the parent you're replying to are awesome and match my experience in my area of electrical engineering (includes a lot of software, programming, database needs as well, so fairly relevant). There are those that have resumes tailored to a single particular thing that if hot right now, will have 1000 recruiters after them to run certain grid studies. I'm more of a fundamentalist (need to think of…

How do you arrange talking to someone at the company?

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#73

Post by cle »

spencerchubb wrote: post #34
joshuaissac wrote: post #26

The article references the following IEEE Spectrum article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/an-engineering-career-only-a-young... > Given a choice, many employers would rather hire a couple of inexperienced computer programmer and spend a few months training them than hiring (or retaining) a more experienced but expensive programmer. In the very next paragraph: > In addition, many employers aren’t interested in providing t…

If you read closely, the former is saying they want to train INEXPERIENCED programmers. The latter is saying they don't want to train EXPERIENCED programmers who are becoming obsolete. Maybe they were trying to make a different point, but that's how I interpret it.

The former are much cheaper to train than the latter.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#74

Post by rightbyte »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #59
jandrewrogers wrote: post #54

It is important to recognize that even if knowledge becomes untrue because some assumption or fundamental has changed, knowing the history of these changes and why they occurred is still extraordinarily valuable knowledge. Too many software developers just know the "current thing" without knowing why it is the current thing and the specific issues that caused us to move on from the old thing. This ignorance of the pa…

> It is important to recognize that even if knowledge becomes untrue because some assumption or fundamental has changed, knowing the history of these changes and why they occurred is still extraordinarily valuable knowledge. [...] I think this sense of history is one of the most important aspects of "experience" when hiring. I can tell you that in my experience employers do not value this kind of knowledge a lot. Qui…

I think that is an orthogonal issue.

That is more or less about virtue signalling that you are a "team player" that helps your boss advance his career rather than doing what nominally is your job. Think teenage clothing fashion. You need to show you are in.

Pretending that complex and risky solutions are needed is a key property of this. The boss need headcounts for the complex fancy project.

And so on, with different companies being in different circles of hell on the matter.

Good solutions usually look simple and easy in my experience. Downplaying the skill in doing them.

The author however seems to write about machine learning, which honestly is a really fast moving field right now. Sometimes things just move fast?

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#75

Post by starcraft2wol »

a_c wrote: post #31

Some angles for me to see this phenomenon - focus on the fundamentals rather than the particular brand of tools. HTTP, tcp, HTML, OS, CPU, filesystem, etc will almost certainly out last a language, framework and SaaS - See beyond the assumptions. Solutions are based on assumptions of current problem. Solutions come and go but the fundamental problem of, for example, go from a place to another, rarely change. Try to d…

The real fundamentals are graphs, trees, stacks, recursion, dp, etc. in other words, computer science.

If someone understands trees they can understand html in one sentence.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#76

Post by starcraft2wol »

epgui wrote: post #36

Obviously I don't have a solution to offer anyone, but this is one of my motivations for wanting to learn more about things like category theory, type theory, functional programming... It's not directly about getting skills that will land me a high paying job (via... marketable resume keywords?), it's more about trying to understand the fundamentals that no PL or framework trend, or social current, can obviate.

I agree with the general idea of math and science. However the fields you mentioned are mostly useful for formalizing computer languages. If you want more concepts to use in actual programs, I think there are more practical areas to look in.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#77

Post by yetanother12345 »

This is not specific to IT. It is a general trend. Also, it's not new; cf the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none". Also, the reason why we don't see Da Vinci types anymore.

    Enthropy is increasing.
Things that used to be in one domain will in time split up into multiple, each having a higher level of detail / sophistication than before. Or, that one domain will die off, possibly being replaced by "something else". This can not be reversed - "you cannot unbreak the broken glass" (It seems that we need to be able to reverse our direction in spacetime to do that, and I believe that is considered a hard problem.)

If you want deep knowledge you can't have broad knowledge. It follows from this that, eg AGI is deadborn; but then specialized AIs have huge potential. This should be the scary part, not the utopian know-it-all Mechanical Turk / HAL / Marvin.

Speaking of the latter, we will have little use for an AGI anyway as such a thing will be way out of our league and we will not be able to use it, as D Adams famously postulated: "Here I am with a brain the size of a planet and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper. Call that job satisfaction? I don't."

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#78

Post by flyinghamster »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #54

It is important to recognize that even if knowledge becomes untrue because some assumption or fundamental has changed, knowing the history of these changes and why they occurred is still extraordinarily valuable knowledge. Too many software developers just know the "current thing" without knowing why it is the current thing and the specific issues that caused us to move on from the old thing. This ignorance of the pa…

Not only that, but the old knowledge can still be useful. Newtonian physics won't explain semiconductors, but it's still useful for slinging space probes around the Solar System or winning bets at a billiard table.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#79

Post by derrickpersson »

I've actually recognized this problem myself. I found that even though I took good notes, reviewed it somewhat consistently - when jumping back to something I used to be a 'master' in, my knowledge is still lacking.

I'm building a learning focused note taking app for this very purpose - https://www.wonderpkm.com/ , would love to chat further with you about your learning approach!

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#80

Post by rightbyte »

yetanother12345 wrote: post #77

This is not specific to IT. It is a general trend. Also, it's not new; cf the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none". Also, the reason why we don't see Da Vinci types anymore. Enthropy is increasing. Things that used to be in one domain will in time split up into multiple, each having a higher level of detail / sophistication than before. Or, that one domain will die off, possibly being replaced by "something el…

> "you cannot unbreak the broken glass"

I really don't like this analogy. You can weld glass back together. Or melt the pieces down and reforge it.

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