George Anders’s YOU CAN DO ANYTHING is shaped by the insight that the leading lights at so many ostensibly tech firms have deep backgrounds in the humanities–history, sociology, and, yes, English. The truth is, the tech boom has less to do with a massive explosion of silicon and aluminum, and much more to do with a massive expansion of the points of contact between humans and machines. Google HQ looks more like a Scandinavian parliament than a server farm. No cloisters of silent technicians guiding Etsy to its marketplace dominance. These are important words of wisdom by a skilled storyteller and a sharp observer of the human condition.There are no underground bunkers of supercomputers at the heart of the Uber miracle. More, he wants to persuade fellow parents of college-age children not to hem in their future job seekers by pushing them to study subjects that don’t interest them. He revels in the story of Andy Anderegg, an English major who wrote snappy copy for Groupon (GRPN) on her way to becoming a highly paid digital audience development consultant.Īnders isn’t so much arguing that a humanities background is better than more practical educational pursuits as he’s making the case that the liberal-arts-inclined needn’t panic about their lack of hirable skills. “You don’t want an engineer on this,” says Anders. He explains how IBM (IBM) turned to Oliver Meeker, a sociology major, to explain to non-technical corporate clients the dastardly difficult-to-understand concept of the blockchain.
These include Josh Sucher, an anthropology graduate whom Etsy (ETSY) put to work interviewing customers to learn what crafts might sell well. It offers practical advice, like the relative uselessness of sending out blind resumes and the huge value of networking among alumni and accepting-and then crushing-part-time and other entry-level positions.Īnders also tells stories about liberal arts students made good.
You Can Do Anything is part how-to for humanities types. Enter Anders, who argues that “creativity, curiosity, and empathy are the job skills of the future.” Yet more and more the technology industry is suffering from an empathy deficit. For a couple decades now the stars of Silicon Valley have been engineers and coders, nerds whose skills have been highly prized. My bias notwithstanding, this book arrives at a critical time. Anders, for many years a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, also is a member of the humanities club: He studied economics at Stanford. I would say that, as a history and political science graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the renowned computer-science school.
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