I recently spoke to two highly-compensated software engineers in Silicon Valley who do not have as much coding experience as many of their peers. Yet, they’ve landed jobs and have received promotions over their more experienced counterparts. In both cases they have a skill that’s in high demand and low supply, according to human resource directors: communication skills.
In his new book The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World, venture capitalist Scott Hartley explains why young professionals who combine both coding and communication, the hard and the soft skills, are in high demand. Professionals who combine both skills will stand apart.
“Finding solutions to our greatest problems requires an understanding of human context as well as code; it requires both ethics and data, both deep thinking people and Deep Learning AI, both human and machine,” writes Hartley.
In 2005, Hartley had a front row seat to the ultimate ‘fuzzy and techie,’ Steve Jobs. Hartley was one of the 23,000 people at Stanford stadium on July 14, 2005, who watched Jobs deliver his now famous commencement address. Hartley, who was graduating with a major in political science, could relate to Jobs’ advice to follow your passion. Jobs — who later said that Apple was special because it combined technology and liberal arts — told the story of taking a calligraphy class at Reed college. Calligraphy was a skill that had no practical application to his life, but would someday revolutionize the entire computer industry.
Hartley went to work for Google and Facebook. In a recent conversation, Hartley told me that the inspiration for his book actually came to him during the four years he worked at a prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital firm. After watching between 2,000 and 3,000 pitches, he began to notice a trend. Hartley said the most attractive startups were not necessarily led by entrepreneurs who dropped out of MIT or who were ‘uber-technologists.’ Instead, they had unconventional backgrounds like sociology and anthropology, and explored diverse interests. They were exceptional communicators who could share a vision and a story. Communication skills “enabled them to fundraise, hire teams, attract customers, and retain talent,” Hartley said.
Hartley reminds us that many successful tech companies were started by “fuzzy’s,” the name Stanford students affectionately called humanities majors.
For example:
-LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Oxford.
-YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki studied history and literature.
-Pinterest founder and billionaire, Ben Silbermann, studied political science.
-Former HP chief executive and presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, studied medieval history.
-Alibab founder Jack Ma was an English teacher.
-Airbnb co-founders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky were fine arts majors at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Earlier this year technology editor Brad Stone, author of The Upstarts, told me that today’s technologists — such as Brian Chesky — are much better communicators than entrepreneurs in the first wave of the Internet revolution. Today’s companies, more than ever, face a broad array of challenges that require building trust with a wide cross-section of stakeholders. “It requires a new type of CEO, Stone told me. “A person who is extroverted, a good storyteller, a politician, and someone who has the charisma to rally customers to their cause.”
Scott Hartley offers advice to career professionals and employers. For professionals, “Do something that scares you. If you’re uncomfortable speaking in public, take a speaking class. If you’re a humanities major, take a class in computer science. If you’re an engineer, study literature…your education should always be in beta.”
For employers, Hartley suggests, “Invest in curiosity. If you have a mechanical engineer, hire an anthropologist on your team. If you’re hiring someone to build the back-end technology infrastructure, you will need a techie. But round out the team with curious people who bring diverse experiences and allow them to build the skills they don’t have.”
Hartley’s advice reminds me of what Steve Jobs said when asked about the team that built the Macintosh. Jobs said, “Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”
It was good advice in 1984. It might be even better advice today.