Another reason for reading ex-Puppy leaders is that they say such wonderfully ignorant things while thinking they are saying something clever: in this case a quote from Vox Day. This time he is criticizing calls for improved interpersonal skills in the IT industry.
“It would be amusing if technical people began imposing this manifesto of mediocrity in non-technical areas. If interpersonal skills are as important as technical skills in the tech industry, are not technical skills as important as interpersonal skills in the service industry?”
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/11/post-meritocracy.html
Oh ho ho, how amusing…except…well that’s close to what people analyzing employment trends are asking for. Now I don’t want to uncritically regurgitate the recruitment industry — the standards of underlying research can be very variable and there’s a degree of hype in terms of trends. Also, you know, capitalism and a tendency to treat people as if they have a moral obligation to fit into templates that suit the needs of industry rather than vice versa. That tendency is of particular concern when considering our increasing understanding of people as being neuro-diverse — there’s a danger in these templates of perfect employees in creating systematic biases against some groups. However, my point is that what I’m discussing is coming not from starry-eyed idealists, leftists or “SJWs” but from the world of businesses trying to maximise their profits.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/Economics/deloitte-au-economics-deakin-soft-skills-business-success-170517.pdf
There’s lots of ways these things are being talked about (“soft skills”, “twenty-first century skills”) and lots of varying taxonomies of them. However, it is notable that there’s a significant push coming from industries for people with a broad mix of such skills and that push comes from multiple kinds of industries.
Without focusing on any one scheme, the kinds of skills talked about include:
- Broad flexible IT skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Communication skills
- Research skills
- Creativity
- Intrapersonal skills (such as self-management, resilience etc)
- Interpersonal skills (teamwork etc)
- Ethics
I’ve tried to organise this list in a particular way. The first two are skills associated with (but not unique to) STEM fields, the second two are more associated with Humanities fields and overlap with the fifth in the Arts. The last three pertain more to personal traits of character.
The point being that industries have noticed repeatedly that while specifics jobs will have particular emphasis on skills (obviously) a broad mix of skills is almost always an advantage. With most modern business having a heavy reliance on IT, an employee who has strong digital literacy is more productive especially in industries without an IT focus. IT professionals who are effective listeners end up doing better, more efficient work for their clients because they have a better understanding of their needs.
It doesn’t take much reflection to see why employers would prefer employees who have skills that cross stereotypical academic disciplines. There are downsides, as I pointed out above, to this call for everybody to be good at everything (frankly I’d be much happier if work didn’t involve other people) but the demand from it in modern workplaces is genuine.