Excellent observation. There is also a bit of that in there. A part of working on a small team is learning to learn. It doesn't matter that you can lift mountains with your pinky if you can't deal with anyone else as a peer.
Like most of the little essays I put together (author here, thanks everyone for reading) it was a reaction to an observation. That observation was that lots of small going on medium sized companies tend to inherit something from the Microsofts of the world, and that is resume myopia.
For everyone who said it's commonsense, I agree completely. Unfortunately, commonsense is not quite as common as you might believe. Around here, this seems obvious but I can say there are plenty of people struggling with the balance.
tptacek summed up my point really well. Thanks again for the feedback!
I'd like to put this out there -- I am talking to people on the business end of things a lot more than the technical talent (I've been on both sides).
Also, I am responding to the video that was embedded that implies that the sky is falling and everyone is going to be out of a job soon enough. I've always been opposed to that sentiment because it ignores what you so elegantly put at the end of your comment -- people doing good stuff (from both a technical and a business perspective) will continue to do well.
As for "digital marketing expert," ugh . . . I think it follows the same line, us "experts" will need to relax or panic as quality dictates.
Online advertising management, social media (whatever that means), branding and image building in digital. Knowing how to deliver your content (video, blog post, product) effectively online and in the best of cases making it so people -care- about that product.
An interesting adjunct to this is whether the criminals actually did -believe- a three year old would have a cell phone and be festooned with a headset.
Especially in LA, that might not completely crazy assumption.
I was thinking about leaving it off because it is really, really bad for anyone who actually reads Sci-Fi. I put it on the list because despite the fact that it's almost completely unreadable because the Wal*Mart set needs their Sci-Fi too. I wanted the list to cover as broad a spectrum of sci-fi as I could without making it 100 items long.
I left off a lot of greats including:
Vernor Vinge Dan Simmons Arthur C Clarke Iain M. Banks
and other works by Stross and a few others
Why is Rand on this list? Well, besides the Bible (go figure) Atlas Shrugged is apparently the most influential book ever written. Do I agree with the whole Objectivist shtick? Not hardly but it is still worth mentioning.
The Giver? Like Anthem it's Sci-Fi for grade schoolers, worth mentioning because a lot of people were introduced to Sci-Fi with books like this.
Leave suggestions, as many as you want. If you don't see it on the list it probably would have been there if I had remembered it while I was compiling.
I personally love Stanislaw Lem's books. Two of my favorites:
- The Cyberiad: a set of short stories that read almost
like silly little fairy tales, complete with
probabalistic dragons, poetry machines, and kings,
and electroknights.
- His Master's Voice: A rather cynical look at
deciphering a message from the stars.
Also, I've heard some people describe Lem's "Solaris" as one of the few science fiction novels that also qualify as great literature, although I must admit I didn't enjoy it as much as Cyberiad.
I think the transistor might have had something to do with all of this innovation. Not to mention C++, wireless networking, and a sizeable fraction of the semiconductor process technology that makes modern electronics possible.
For good reason: The da Vinci is the only option for performing surgical procedures. It is the sole (currently available) robot approved by the FDA for clinical use. The Zeus surgical system from Computer Motion is also FDA approved; however, it is no longer available for purchase (Intuitive killed it in favour of the da Vinci).
