In spite of having a STEM background myself, I determined as a teenager that I would NOT attend a purely technical university. My general curiosity surrounding a wide array of subjects and pursuits made me gravitate toward either liberal arts schools or ones that provided a healthy dose of liberal arts. What was once prized and quite frankly a differentiator in America--a well-rounded education--would soon make way for prioritizing all things technical. "Coding" became the new gold ticket to success, and people coding out of their dorm rooms were hailed as precocious geniuses. Computer science classes became the norm for freshman at Stanford and Harvard. And the somewhat well-rounded folks kind of participated in the hubris by inserting themselves into Product Management and Founder (part smooth-talkers to raise $) roles. But technical prowess--the ability to bring eyeballs to apps--became the prized skillset above all, only exacerbated by the AI craze as of late.
However, something interesting is happening. The very technical achievements that catapulted the value of STEM folks (or more specifically, people with computer science backgrounds) is starting to cannibalize them. Prominent Silicon Valley figureheads are tweeting about how people should not teach their kids to code (due to the advancements in--ironically--AI). The value chain is coming full circle to, you guessed it, inquisitive minds that know how to ask the right questions and clearly frame problems. The value is shifting from execution to thinking and ideation, where execution is becoming commoditized or at least being relegated to a more difficult technical problem. Coding academies and boot camps won't cut it, and computer science is slowly transitioning back into the realm of nerd (as opposed to entrepreneurial) heaven.
In other words, the value of human curiosity, inquisition, creativity, and clear thinking are "suddenly" becoming valuable. The final element to the puzzle is decision-making. The ability to put it all together to made the right judgement calls, especially since there is such grey area in the brave new world of AI-driven applications. Even the roadmap for hardware isn't as cookie-cutter as it used to be. Which architectures to use, what types of chips are best suited for AI, power consumption, etc are not as deterministic or predictable as say the roadmap of microprocessor development in the 90s/00s.
For the longest time, my billion-$ startup ideas were stunted by my ability to not code. My value resided in ideation and, as an early eTrade employee told me on a plane ride once, the ability to peer around the corner to see things others don't into the future. So I put most of my effort into a vocation that seemed to reward my talents, trading. I was actually mistaken. "Investing" (i.e. the stocks I selected and told others about but never bought myself) would have been ideal for my skillsets, but alas life would have other plans for me. My itch to become a world-class trader made me ditch investing, and here we are. Trading would challenge me to not only be a good thinker, but also refine my emotional constitution, focus, execution, humility, and mathematical sense in the context of risk. I am still working on those things, and I don't think they'll ever end. But to tip the scales from red to green changes everything. It's like life as a student versus life as a professional - your efforts finally starting to show for something, and you can build upon them without feeling like you're on a journey down a bottomless pit!
So I conclude this post by saying that my gut instinct from the beginning - to hone my skills as a trader - are completely validated by all of these trends in the value chain coming full-circle. Keep being curious, don't be a corporate drone, and don't worship occupation or role XYZ just because it's the hot potato of the day or even decade!
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