AI /Reid Hoffman interview: “revenge of the English major”

[Anonymous]

Sure…we still need HS Teachers….
I run an elite Head Hunting firm in the NE placing prospects in high level Finance, Management jobs at Fortune 100 companies.

In 20 years doing this, I have placed my fair share of non business and non engineers in those positions. Typically History, PoliScie, IR, majors. I have yet to place an English major (even with more specialized grad degree) at any of these places….

[Anonymous]

Honestly, our kids should major in whatever they want because the world is changing so rapidly that no one has truly any idea what skills or degree will be valuable five or ten or fifteen years from now. AI will (probably sooner rather than later) come for most jobs, and there will have to be universal basic income to forestall mass societal upheavals and violence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I am a liberal arts major who works in AI. You cannot be scared of coding for substantive roles in AI, but key roles in which I see a lot of liberal arts majors thrive are product - figuring out that to build, developer advocacy /community roles that are critical for open source, and documentation - now incredibly important as folks are sic-ing copilots on documentation to write code. And of course sales- folks don’t realize that in tech sellers often make more than most of the Eng team at a similar level of experience.

Agree on sales

English majors aren't usually gregarious people who like to chat with people. Sales people are.

It’s not even that…sales doesn’t give a shit what you studied…or even graduated from college many times.

There is no preference for any specific degree for sales but rather do you have a sales personality.

Unfortunately, as anyone in business knows, sales staff has a ton of churn.

pp here.. yes, exactly. That's my point. It's about type of personality, and most English majors don't have that type of personality to go into sales.

Nice sweeping generalization.

Yes, there's a reason for that generalization. Also, most English majors are female.

And most CS majors are male.

So?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Standup for English major’s because we have rites, too. Some one have to know the difference between stationary and stationery and be able to conjugate the pass tense of verbs. You only think your a good writer but I know and you’re colleagues know that you write runon sentences and has terrible grammer spelling and use age even though English is you’re Native language and you even have a collage degree.

These issues are taught in k-12, not collegiate English. University English is about tracing from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Pound and Zukofsky to understand literary tradition.

"Literature" especially "Old Literature" is a small part of English department.

https://english.umd.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/english-ba

What an idiotic comment. Most of an English department is nothing before 1800s.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they already are asking for english, history, philosophy and classics.

No one wants a CS coder....

This isn’t true. Everyone wants coders, there’s just a lot more of them.

We don't need many now with DeepSeek.....
AI will do the coding.

Just like how AI has replaced accountants, teachers, doctors, and lawyers.

AI has not replaced lawyers.

That’s the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they already are asking for english, history, philosophy and classics.

No one wants a CS coder....

This isn’t true. Everyone wants coders, there’s just a lot more of them.

We don't need many now with DeepSeek.....
AI will do the coding.

Just like how AI has replaced accountants, teachers, doctors, and lawyers.

AI has not replaced lawyers.

There's an increasing amount of low-level stuff AI can do. I'd expect AI to eliminate the need for a lot of paralegal work - one common path for English majors who decided not to go to law school...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Standup for English major’s because we have rites, too. Some one have to know the difference between stationary and stationery and be able to conjugate the pass tense of verbs. You only think your a good writer but I know and you’re colleagues know that you write runon sentences and has terrible grammer spelling and use age even though English is you’re Native language and you even have a collage degree.

Bad troll. Hope your kid can find a job with the millions of CS and engineering grads every year. Maybe the $75k you spend a year will be worth it and they won’t get disregarded for someone at San Jose State.

PP English major. I’ve never had difficulty finding a job and secured a fabulous position months before I graduated.

My college graduate DS chose to attend an in-state university and had a strikingly similar post-graduate career trajectory. He was recruited specifically for his writing, research and communication skills - the benefit of a solid liberal arts education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Standup for English major’s because we have rites, too. Some one have to know the difference between stationary and stationery and be able to conjugate the pass tense of verbs. You only think your a good writer but I know and you’re colleagues know that you write runon sentences and has terrible grammer spelling and use age even though English is you’re Native language and you even have a collage degree.

Bad troll. Hope your kid can find a job with the millions of CS and engineering grads every year. Maybe the $75k you spend a year will be worth it and they won’t get disregarded for someone at San Jose State.

PP English major. I’ve never had difficulty finding a job and secured a fabulous position months before I graduated.

My college graduate DS chose to attend an in-state university and had a strikingly similar post-graduate career trajectory. He was recruited specifically for his writing, research and communication skills - the benefit of a solid liberal arts education.

Maybe you should’ve taken a logic course if your only defense is a non-sequitur based in anecdotes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sure…we still need HS Teachers….
I run an elite Head Hunting firm in the NE placing prospects in high level Finance, Management jobs at Fortune 100 companies.

In 20 years doing this, I have placed my fair share of non business and non engineers in those positions. Typically History, PoliScie, IR, majors. I have yet to place an English major (even with more specialized grad degree) at any of these places….

You denigrate high school English teachers and you write like that? That’s rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, our kids should major in whatever they want because the world is changing so rapidly that no one has truly any idea what skills or degree will be valuable five or ten or fifteen years from now. AI will (probably sooner rather than later) come for most jobs, and there will have to be universal basic income to forestall mass societal upheavals and violence.

Not enough ppl are focused on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they already are asking for english, history, philosophy and classics.

No one wants a CS coder....

This isn’t true. Everyone wants coders, there’s just a lot more of them.

We don't need many now with DeepSeek.....
AI will do the coding.

Just like how AI has replaced accountants, teachers, doctors, and lawyers.

AI has not replaced lawyers.

There's an increasing amount of low-level stuff AI can do. I'd expect AI to eliminate the need for a lot of paralegal work - one common path for English majors who decided not to go to law school...

If you read the article on Klarna it doesn’t mince words…yes, AI has directly replaced lawyers at the company because one strong attorney is now 5x more productive.

It’s not replacing appellate lawyers arguing in front of the Supreme Court, but companies have many in house lawyers working on standard commercial agreements and those folks just aren’t needed in the same numbers.