if all these people complaining about the poor social skills of some people, one would think they could use THEIR apparently masterful social skills to work around the kinks and get the most out of the people with limited social skills.

I worked with these people very successfully in college, where the admissions didn't weed them out, but I think you'll find that most tech company's hiring processes are finely tuned to prevent that type of person from stepping through the door.

>On a purely practical level, I never enjoyed writing papers on literature. I enjoyed reading, and even discussing themes etc, but I would have hated to be tested on it, because I know it would have dragged my grades down.

I wouldn't say I exactly relished such papers, but I always used humanities classes to keep my grades up. Especially once I reached the CS grad courses, and shit got real.

No person should be called a child just because he dares to be critical of how a CS program is put together by an institute.

I'm not sure how to else characterise someone who comes and complains on an internet forum about how much his life sucks because he can't do exactly what he wants, other than "childish"...

Well I found plenty of good inputs here in this thread from other people, so some people seems to know how to. Anyway it is not my job to teach you how to communicate professionally(even though I do have the degree to do so). It is your forums, your rules and therefore I was just putting forward some suggestions to what could be done differently. I shall not write more posts in this thread.

I find the hard to believe, especially when more than half of the college grads right now are unemployed right out the gate, regardless of major or to a lesser extent if they took humanities classes or not. You know what? Its extremely hard to get past the HR drones unless you have inside contacts, which is more of the rule than the exception

I'm a little insulted that you think I obtained my job through "inside contacts". I was hired after the same interview process everyone else goes through, purely on the basis of my technical abilities and skill in communication - abilities and skills that I have earned through study and hard work.

The jobs situation may be that dire in various other fields (many of the humanities included). But in CS there are plenty of companies willing to hire those with the requisite skills - it's a field with 3.5% unemployment, for goodness sake.

And I hope that last sentence about Computer Science drones was a joke. I pray it was. I'll assume it was.

Actually, I'd say that there's some truth to it. It applies to more than just computer science, too. If all you can talk about is your field, then the only people who will want to talk to you will be in your field and (by definition) the only conversation you'll get will be related to your field. If all you can talk about is your field, I can guarantee that other people will have a lot of difficulty relating to you. Some people might prefer this state of being, of course. I know very few people for whom that is the case. I know even fewer people for whom the idea of socially interacting with such "drones" is a palatable one.

If you honestly for one second think that not taking a college course in a subject makes you completely uneducated in it, then I think this conversation should end here, at least for my sake. The friends I've made in my CS classes are ridiculously diverse people with many different interests and lifestyles I never encountered in my hometown. Just because they major in a science doesn't make them robots. You'd think I wouldn't have to be telling you this, but just because some people act a certain way doesn't mean all people with the same interests act the same way. And I didn't need a humanities class to learn that. I'm done talking about these fake "drones" who don't exist (just because a guy is a drone when he's talking to you doesn't mean he's a drone when he's talking to, say, people he actually likes).

Perhaps you've noticed that pointing out problems with another person's ideas is not considered disrespectful here. Perhaps you've noticed that this is a technical forum. Perhaps you've noticed that the entire purpose of (most) technical forums revolves around pointing out problems with other people's ideas in order to help them. This is not a place where we pat each other on the back just for having an opinion. If you post an opinion here, you should expect that someone will eventually point out a problem with your opinion. That's what we do.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that posts that seem like teenage-level whining should be called out as such, so I don't blame people for doing just that if they make such a judgement. I'm sure many of us have had similar feelings to those OP expresses. I'm likewise sure that most of said people have had those feelings called out as detrimental to one's personal growth by our elders, our peers, or even those more junior than us. Personally, I welcome such calling out as useful to clarifying my own self-perception. I would rather have the entire internet tell me that my way of thinking is unhelpful - and therefore be aware of the fact and able to contemplate how to correct it - than remain unaware and potentially fuck myself over later in life.

Maybe because then you wouldn't have the fun job of just piling on a guy, post after post, joining the horde of "You don't know anything, young blood. You just so stupid and young and oooh."

I'm no longer certain that you and I are reading the same thread.

Yeah, I agree.

if all these people complaining about the poor social skills of some people, one would think they could use THEIR apparently masterful social skills to work around the kinks and get the most out of the people with limited social skills.

I worked with these people very successfully in college, where the admissions didn't weed them out, but I think you'll find that most tech company's hiring processes are finely tuned to prevent that type of person from stepping through the door.

It just seems so contradictory to me with how much "blah blah blah" companies do about professionalism but they can't work around some social skill issues. All the ridiculous crap you have to do at a job but they can't handle a little social limitation? Ridiculous.

And I just had to fill out this app and they do this screening for presumably sociopathic tendencies with all these tricky questions but then you look at the behavior of the company/organization and their business practices and it seems so hypocritical. Is it any better to be a manipulative asshole with social skills that you utilize towards that goal than to not have very good social skills? I can tell you that I would take some of those clueless people any day over the psychopaths I and my friends have had to deal with in management.

ChaosEngine, on 28 Jan 2013 - 10:25, said:
On a purely practical level, I never enjoyed writing papers on literature. I enjoyed reading, and even discussing themes etc, but I would have hated to be tested on it, because I know it would have dragged my grades down.
I wouldn't say I exactly relished such papers, but I always used humanities classes to keep my grades up. Especially once I reached the CS grad courses, and shit got real.

I never did a grad course, just a B.Sc in CS/physics and frankly, the CS courses were trivially easy compared to the physics stuff. I still have nightmares about electromagnetism and quantum mechanics.

Overall though, I agree that a broad education is a good thing. If I had some down time, I think I'd go back to uni and do a few courses in industrial design or philosophy.

If you honestly for one second think that not taking a college course in a subject makes you completely uneducated in it, then I think this conversation should end here, at least for my sake.

The friends I've made in my CS classes are ridiculously diverse people with many different interests and lifestyles I never encountered in my hometown. Just because they major in a science doesn't make them robots. You'd think I wouldn't have to be telling you this, but just because some people act a certain way doesn't mean all people with the same interests act the same way. And I didn't need a humanities class to learn that.

I'm done talking about these fake "drones" who don't exist (just because a guy is a drone when he's talking to you doesn't mean he's a drone when he's talking to, say, people he actually likes).

And I'm perfectly within my right to complain about those things I don't like. That's how change happens. Sitting silent and taking it is, ironically, the most drone-like thing to do.

I am here to complain that all this complaining about complaining about complaining is too meta. Let my poor head meat get some concrete thoughts going on dammit!

And I'm perfectly within my right to complain about those things I don't like. That's how change happens.

Nobody has ever effected change by complaining anonymously on the internet.

If you want to change the fact that humanities courses are part of a liberal arts education, how about bringing that up the next time your university's president has on open house? Writing an article outlining your position to your college newspaper, alumni magazine, or an education journal? Or at least complain in some forum where there are a significant number of university professors - as far as I know there are only a handful of us on GDNet who have even taught at the university level, let alone actual professors.

Employers want "well-rounded" employees. Because most kids in the USA exit high school vastly underachieving even by youth standards, they are forced to make prospects prove that they got would they should have received in secondary education before applying for college or tech school.

Some countries such as Japan create excellent high school graduates, safe to say the average one there outperforms most in the USA. Other countries such as Germany also release well rounded secondary school graduates which outperform and understand better than USA students by quite a gap on average.

My response is why you should stay the course since you started in it. There is no need to change schools or degrees, I say to the young people, but you sure best know what you are entering.

It is very important to show that you complete a plan, project, or curriculum to prospective future employers and partners, even if you hate some of the courses. In real life you will be asked to do many things over the years which you hate to do. Is it better to do what you love? Yes, but until then keep your nose to the grind stone, because building a good reputation is more important than how you feel about any classes.

it's a field with 3.5% unemployment, for goodness sake.

I knew it was low, but holy crap! That's quite phenomenal.

That said, I have a CS degree and an Art Minor. I would say Art History was my least favorite art course. I wouldn't blame humanities, you just happened to pick a bad humanities course. I like art and I even disliked the art history courses I took; largely because they are usually structured in very boring ways.

There are any number of blogs/articles on why humanities are in the traditional college degree. I would recommend googling about it. You'll probably find some better/more thorough arguments and probably leave with a better understanding of what you should most be taking away from your degree (hint: It's not what you think).