Thread: 10 Reasons Why Self-Taught Engineers are the Best in the World

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

"Hey guys, you wanna know what's cool about PHP? A script can fail and it doesn't bring down your entire server !"

No, it just hands the server on a platter to the first shady character that finds the script.

But yeah, back to the original topic: The way I see the self-learned/formal education divide is similar to becoming professional at something. You can do it yourself, but it requires more self-control than most have; doing it via formal education, where you're guided towards it, is much easier.

Let's say you do concrete for a living. If you're professional -- regardless of whether you have formal education in concrete or not --, you'll make it your business to know what kind of concrete is required for what purpose, and how to produce concrete that matches the client requirements.

Most concrete workers are not that; to most, it's just manual labor. Some might get really good and fast at some specific task (like pouring the exact right amount, estimating the amounts needed for typical jobs, vibrating the poured concrete, or flattening it fast but nice) -- at least enough so to be paid more than a regular concrete-Joe does.

That's how many self-learned "engineers" are, too: they know how to do the one or few things they are really interested in, and often have lots of practical experience doing it, too, but they usually lack even the basics outside that narrow area.

Our technology and sciences have grown so complicated, that one human being is not able to master an entire field anymore. (You could say one form of the singularity is here.) Formal education forces the learner to grasp the basics of the entire field, especially the uninteresting bits, with real-world applicable parts being frankly a very small part only.

The self-learning aspects are necessary, as they make it possible for the person to master some aspect of the field (or become a generalist -- very valuable for team leader and management types). However, typically, self-learners do not take the time to learn the uninteresting but eventually important parts of the general field they are in, but center on the part they find most interesting.

Nowadays, even a very specialized expert needs the sort of basic knowledge and skills even a second-rate formal education gives outside their focus area, to be able to maximize their effectiveness and utility in a team, and to adapt to the field itself changing. Having some overlap with others is that necessary, and useful.

In natural sciences (for researchers instead of engineers), this overlap is even more important. Even though fields are specializing at an amazing pace, there are lots of overlap. For example, someone specializing in space physics, say Earth's magnetosphere and solar wind, might very well be able to make a jump to fusion research, because the two have interesting parallels and relate to each other.

As an another example, there is very little difference between quantum chemistry, quantum biology, and materials physics (using ab initio-, or quantum, methods). But, having someone switch between physics and biology departments after their master's degree does sound pretty weird. Today, it's not weird at all, its just how our fields of research diverge and merge at different levels.

Originally Posted by MutantJohn

I'm at the point where they can honestly just fire me.

There you go. So yeah, put in notice, try to be nice to everyone, and leave.