I am a great admirer of the late Dr. Richard Hamming and he said basically the same thing. Math and science education is important, but humanities is missing for most engineers to their great detriment.

I have a BA in Economics though I am a 20-year software veteran and I can honestly say that this degree has probably helped my career more than any CS knowledge I have. My family was also heavily into the humanities in general, plus a number of my parents were in leadership positions (both corporate and military). All the stories I heard growing up had to do with people and social relations, literally never anything technical. (For context, one of my parents has an electrical engineering background and was a hardware startup founder.)

Human factors dominate all other factors and most engineers/devs/whatever tend to learn this way too late in their career. There's a sincere but ultimately naive hope that if the tech could just be really excellent then all that messy human stuff just wouldn't be a problem.

▲

a34729t 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Humanities in academia is just as bad as human factors. The biggest thing that can help is having a shitty low paying job or two early in one's career. And then working formal a stable, normal company where there is real mentorship.

▲

_doctor_love an hour ago | parent [-]

When I say humanities, I mean having a humanistic attitude. Looking at the social and environmental dynamics before looking at any specific technical issue in detail. Not necessarily anything to do with academia.

Strong agree that everyone would benefit from having a shitty service job or two when they're young to learn what life is really like for most people. I worked a bunch of different service jobs in high school and college, it's shocking how poorly most people treat someone just because they're standing behind the counter.

In the corporate world I find it's usually very obvious who has real life experience and who doesn't.

	▲	Upvoter33 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Which Hamming quote, btw, do you refer to? I think he mostly talks about talking with other "smart" people, and communicating what you are working on a lot (like giving talks, etc.). But, this doesn't read like much of a case for the humanities, per se.

▲

MyHonestOpinon an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I always thought that an Engineering degree with an MBA is a very good combination. You get very practical, useful things when you are younger. Once you have acquired enough life and work experience then you can appreciate the subtleties of cases that you study in an MBA.