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More stories coming in about the difference between getting good grades and doing a good job. A friend has been reading this numbered rant and pulled me aside earlier this week. “You don’t know how much you have hit the nail on the head with this one” she told me. “My husband is running the software division of a new computer company. They are trying to solve really difficult software problems for a new computing platform. My husband needs help, so he has been calling in the best and the brightest comp sci guys he can find to help him. He has had to fire every single one. These guys simply can’t conceive of a solution that is outside their standard linear way of thinking. My husband is now hiring theoretical physicists and teaching them to code. It’s the only way that he can get the work done.” I have said it before, and I’ll probably say it many times hence… the jobs of the future will require creativity as foundational skill. You can say what you like about our education system (and many have), but nobody is claiming that the education system of today is enhancing the creative capabilities of our kids. At a certain point all the kids that get good grades, go to the right schools, know the right formulas and can perform all the right routines are going to have be trained to become like they were before they went to school: curious and creative. It is inevitable. And the reason it is inevitable is because recruiting hasn’t screamed “Stop the madness!”

Comments

[Paul Senzee]

I'm curious to know the nature of these software problems. There have been many new platforms throughout the history of computing, and there aren't very many 'fundamentally new' problems in computer science.

[Jeff Hunter]

Great question Paul. Rather than give away my source (who asked to remain anonymous) I will instead point you here and hope it answers your question indirectly:

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-intro.html

Thanks for reading!

[Paul Senzee]

I agree completely with your overall thesis about the inability of school to make people into innovators.

With this particular example, however, I think having modern software engineers work on quantum computers (at this early point in their development) is simply a gross mismatch of skill sets. I'd guess quantum computing at this point is probably 95% percent theoretical physics and 5% percent computer science.

the difference between getting good grades and doing a good job.

I don't think it makes sense to associate all the best and brightest of comp sci with the former category (getting good grades) and theoretical physicists with the latter (doing a good job). I'm sure a lot of the physicists got good grades and a lot of the computer scientists didn't. After all, the physicists are smarter, right? ;)

Let us know how the physicists work out in the end. :)

[jen_chan, writer surefirewealth.com]

Creativity is a characteristic that chooses no one. You can be a king and yet have more creativity than the resident painter. I think it goes the same way with Science guys. Some of them possess creativity. Some of them don't. It just depends on how a person has lived his or her life and how he or she managed to cultivate that creativity.