Here are some of the “Work Wanted” ads actually posted on the bulletin board at the Che Guevara Student Collective at Beezer University. That’s the one right next to the statue of John Kerry.
Trying to find a real job after earning a degree in Political Science/International Relations–what a hoot that was! One of those things they don’t tell you while you’re paying tuition (“Either stay in school or see if they can use another fry guy at Burger King…”)
Ah, well, it only took me 50 years to get my act together.
Unfortunately, this isn’t that far from reality. I used to work with a guy who would remind you of his Master’s Degree all the time. I moments of reality, he admitted that he knew virtually nothing. He supervised a department of people who did all the work, but really didn’t understand anything. He was truly pathetic, but very self important.
You can, in fact, supervise people who know more than you do. But it’s an art, and only comes with natural talent and practical experience.
It’s entirely possible, and all but inevitable in these complicated times but … it has to be approached with consciousness of one’s own limitations. There are a handful of things where I would consider myself an expert, and probably would be able to spot potential problems that might otherwise go unnoticed. I’ve been doing Datacom and network design for a long time, but there are instances which, even with my experience, I might overlook something.
The next tier are areas in which I am knowledgeable, but don’t work with often enough to have my abilities at a fine edge. For example, at one time I did a lot of server administration, but it’s been a few years since that was part of my role, and I would be more than happy to bounce my ideas off of someone else, if I was performing a significant change involving complex server administration.
If I was supervising an experienced served administrator, I’d take much of what they said under advisement and would see my role more as a knowledgeable observer, than as an expert, with up to date experience.
Then there are areas in which I am not experienced. While I have some basic programming skills, I am not a software developer. I might be able to add insights into the network security ramifications of some aspect of software design, but I am not in a position to tell someone who to do their work as a developer. I wouldn’t see myself in a supervisory role, involving developers, but if I was asked to supervise developers, about all I could do is make sure that they showed up on time. 🙂
In the case of the fellow I mentioned above, the impression I got was that he was lacking knowledge, and had no hands on experience, whatsoever. What he had was a single sheet of paper with some print on it which said he had a level of knowledge in a certain subject. What he didn’t have was any skill at applying his knowledge to the real world.
An MD has theory, and perhaps some clinical exposure during the last half of medical school, but even with doctoral level of knowledge regarding the body, diseases and pharmacology, even a doctor who graduates at the top of their class serves an apprenticeship, of sorts, starting with a grueling year of internship, and usually followed by years of residency. Without some hands on training, and some trial by fire, an MD is going to have a hard time applying their knowledge.
What the fellow I used to work with needed was to get his hands dirty, and to disabuse himself of the notion that his degree meant that he never had to break a sweat again. I actually encountered him in a practical setting, and he was clueless. He knew names of things, and had theoretical knowledge of how things should work, but he couldn’t walk up to something in the real world and understand what it actually did, and he was supervising people who needed to know those things. In many cases, even those who worked under his supervision probably had significant gaps in their knowledge and understanding, but at least they didn’t retreat when faced with a challenge, holding their degree up as a shield against reality. Eventually, he failed in his job and left that employer.
Well, you don’t have to be a terrific player to be a good manager of a softball team–if you know whom to listen to and can see the difference between good advice and bad. It helped me be a very good managing editor when I went into the newspaper business.
We run into people like this almost every day— every day that we are trying to do any kine of business anyway. I don’t claim to be a genius, but this stuff is really frustrating.