From Newsgroup: comp.misc
On 4/24/2024 3:47:39 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
A possibly interesting relevant anecdote:
Over the late 80s and early 90s, I worked, very casually and
intermittently, with a humanities prof at MIT who ran a special
program for a selected group of 30 or 40 of each year's frosh.
He once remarked, with some surprise, that many of those 1st year
students in the program had told him that they were only at MIT and
only in a STEM major because they'd learned they were very good at the technical stuff and saw that innate ability as an entry to corporate
success. But the had no desire or intent to pursue science/tech as a
career. Once having obtained a career foothold, they wanted to segue
to management at the earliest opportunity.
The only difference between the Companies is how long it will
take and maybe, if someone at the top realizes what is happening,
make changes instead of watching their bank account grow.
In a depressing irony, this makes sense...and the initial article proves why. Ben Gomes lost his job, Prabhakar Raghavan got it. Being good in a STEM field is how you *get* a job. Being well-connected in a management position is how you *keep* a job. If 'making an internet search engine successfully search
the internet' isn't a justifiable reason to continue employing someone at a company who's job is to enable people to search the internet, then nothing
is.
Moreover, it's got to be extremely difficult to take that skillset elsewhere. I'm sure Microsoft would, theoretically, *love* to have Gomes on their
payroll, but that seems messy. Splunk/Cisco and ElasticSearch might be alternatives, but there's definitely tradeoffs involved.
Getting into management, however, is far safer, and again, the article proves it. Raghavan had few successes, if any, and still managed to fail upward throughout his career. Management allows you to do that, STEM does not.
Ultimately, STEM is a magnet for two types of folks: those who see it as a calling (i.e. want to make the world a better place at the cost of self sacrifice), and those who see it as a road to wealth (i.e. the ones who want
to make money, period). That the second path is visible in the provided anecdote, rather than the first by itself, makes perfect sense.
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