2016-09-05, 10:11 AMThat 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket

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That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree HasBecome Tech's Hottest Ticket

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield (Photo credit: Carlo Ricci forForbes)

In less than two years Slack Technologies hasbecome one of the most glistening of tech’s ten-digit “unicorn” startups, boasting 1.1 millionusers and a private market valuation of $2.8billion. If you’ve used Slack’s team-basedmessaging software, you know that one of itscatchiest innovations is Slackbot, a helpful littleavatar that pops up periodically to provide tips sojaunty that it seems human.

Such creativity can’t be programmed. Instead,much of it is minted by one of Slack’s 180employees, Anna Pickard, the 38-year-oldeditorial director. She earned a theater degreefrom Britain’s Manchester MetropolitanUniversity before discovering that she hated theconstant snubs of auditions that didn’t work out.After winning acclaim for her blogging,

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I write about innovation, careers and unforgettable personalities.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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videogame writing and cat impersonations, shefound her way into tech, where she cooks up zanyreplies to users who type in “I love you,Slackbot.” It’s her mission, Pickard explains, “toprovide users with extra bits of surprise anddelight.” The pay is good; the stock options, evenbetter.

What kind of boss hires a thwarted actress for abusiness-to-business software startup? StewartButterfield, Slack’s 42-year-old cofounder andCEO, whose estimated double-digit stake in thecompany could be worth $300 million or more.He’s the proud holder of an undergraduatedegree in philosophy from Canada’s University ofVictoria and a master’s degree from Cambridgein philosophy and the history of science.

“Studying philosophy taught me two things,” saysButterfield, sitting in his office in San Francisco’sSouth of Market district, a neighborhood almostentirely dedicated to the cult of coding. “I learnedhow to write really clearly. I learned how tofollow an argument all the way down, which isinvaluable in running meetings. And when Istudied the history of science, I learned about theways that everyone believes something is true–like the old notion of some kind of ether in the airpropagating gravitational forces–until theyrealized that it wasn’t true.”

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Slack’s core business benefits from thephilosopher’s touch. Hard-core engineers havebeen trying to build knowledge-managementsoftware for at least 15 years. Most of theirapproaches are so cumbersome that corporateusers can’t wait to quit. Slack makes everythingsimple. It bridges everything from Dropbox toTwitter, helping users organize documents,photos and data files into streamlined channelsfor easy browsing. Considering that Butterfield

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spent his early 20s trying to make sense ofWittgenstein’s writings, sorting out corporateknowledge might seem simple.

And he’s far from alone. Throughout the majorU.S. tech hubs, whether Silicon Valley or Seattle,Boston or Austin, Tex., software companies arediscovering that liberal arts thinking makes themstronger. Engineers may still command thebiggest salaries, but at disruptive juggernautssuch as Facebook and Uber, the war for talenthas moved to nontechnical jobs, particularlysales and marketing. The more that audaciouscoders dream of changing the world, the morethey need to fill their companies with socialalchemists who can connect with customers–andmake progress seem pleasant.

Think of the ways the automobile revolution ofthe 1920s created enormous numbers of jobs forpeople who helped fit cars into everyday life:marketers, salesmen, driving instructors, roadcrews and so on. Something similar is afoottoday. MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson andAndrew McAfee argue in a recent book, TheSecond Machine Age, that today’s tech wave willinspire a new style of work in which tech takescare of routine tasks so that people canconcentrate on what mortals do best: generatingcreative ideas and actions in a data-rich world.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by2022 some 1 million more Americans will enterthe workforce as educators. Another 1.1 millionnewcomers will earn a living in sales. Suchopportunities won’t be confined to remedialteaching or department store cashiers. Each waveof tech will create fresh demand for high-paidtrainers, coaches, workshop leaders andsalespeople. By contrast, software engineers’ranks will grow by 279,500, or barely 3% ofoverall job growth. Narrowly defined tech jobs,by themselves, aren’t going to be the answer forlong-term employment growth, says MichaelChui, a partner at McKinsey Global Institute.

Such nuances elude policymakers, who can’tshake the notion that tech-centered instruction isthe only sure ticket to success. President Barack

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Obama has repeatedly called for more spendingon tech-focused high schools. In a Februaryinterview with the Re/code website, he hailedcomputer-programming classes as “a hugepriority,” adding: “It can’t just be a handful ofkids. It’s got to be everybody.”

In fact, people without a tech degree may alreadybe benefiting the most from tech’s boom .Some fascinating insights can be found onLinkedIn, which tracks graduates of specificuniversities as they move into the workforce. Sayhello to the 62,887 LinkedIn members whoattended Northwestern University in the pastdecade. Now zoom in on the 3,426 who havemoved to the San Francisco Bay Area, one of themost popular destinations outside the Midwest,as they chase the Silicon Valley dream. Smartcall: The Wildcats’ top corporate employersinclude Google, Apple, Facebook, Genentech andLinkedIn.

Surprisingly, only 30% of these migrants endedup in engineering, research or informationtechnology. As LinkedIn data show, most of themigrants have created nontechnical career pathsin Silicon Valley. The list starts with sales andmarketing (14%) and goes on to includeeducation (6%), consulting (5%), businessdevelopment (5%) and a host of other specialtiesranging from product management to real estate.Add up the jobs held by people who majored inpsychology, history, gender studies and the like,and they quickly surpass the totals forengineering and computer science.

Run the numbers on recent graduates of BostonUniversity, the University of Texas at Austin orany of the University of California campuses, andthe hiring pattern in Silicon Valley is seen to bebroadly similar. A case in point is Rachel Lee,who graduated from UC, Berkeley with acommunications degree in 2011; now she’s anaccount manager at Slack. She’s been at thecompany for barely a month but she’s alreadyhelped a construction company assimilate Slack’ssoftware to keep track of things as varied asplaster shipments and building regulations viaemployee smartphones. Lee says she’s in awe of

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her technical colleagues who write Slack’s code.They, in turn, respect her because of heruntechnical ability to “connect with end usersand figure out what they want.”

In Austin Suzy Elizondo can see tech’s new powerstructure every time she looks around the roomduring customer meetings. She has been workingfor five years at Phunware, which developsmobile applications for a wide variety ofcustomers, including AT&T, the Houston airportand celebrity astrologers. When she joined thecompany as a design specialist after earning anadvertising degree from UT Austin, she was theodd one out. Most meetings were packed withsoftware engineers.

Suzy Elizondo (Photo credit Darren Carroll For Forbes)

Now nontechnical people from clients and fromher own company often occupy at least half theseats. The reason: Software development keepsgetting more automated. The rise of contentlibraries and plug-in modules means that mobileapps can be built much faster, with fewer people.But the nontechnical side–getting everyone toagree on what an app should look like–is morelabor-intensive than ever. That means endlessmeetings and revisions for Elizondo, who’s now acreative director overseeing a seven-persondepartment.

Mobile technology doesn’t only make life moreconvenient, observes Robert Tabb, a Phunwaresalesman who visits medical centers all year.Putting easy-to-use information on everyone’ssmartphone also redefines a lot of people’s jobs.And that means lots of intense conversations

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about how big organizations should reconfigurethemselves to handle these dislocations. Tabbsees this upheaval in action every time heapproaches hospitals about installing mobileapps that guide patients toward theirappointments, even if it’s not obvious whichcorridors lead from the lobby to Room C-713.

“It takes about ten meetings for us to get one ofthese deals put together,” Tabb says. “And onlytwo of those meetings are about the technology.”The rest of the time Tabb earns his keep bypracticing shuttle diplomacy. Early on, thepatient-relations specialists love his idea, but thebuilding engineers are dubious. Once thephysical mapping issues are resolved, newtensions flare up regarding the prominence–orabsence–of the medical center’s brand on themobile app. Eventually everyone is happy, andthe deal gets done.

Being able to read the room is such a crucial skill,adds Phunware sales executive Mike Snavely,that he’s willing to hire people who don’t knowmuch about technology if they have a gift forrelating to other people. It doesn’t bother him atall that Tabb started out selling running shoes orthat Elizondo sells handmade jewelry at weekendcrafts fairs as a hobby. Eccentricity, at leastrelative to the geeks coding all night in the back,sharpens people skills, he finds.

To be sure, the financial payoff of an engineeringdegree remains strong. A 2014 report by theAssociation of American Colleges & Universitiesfound that engineering majors earned an averageof about $92,000 a year in their late 30s,compared with about $61,000 for graduates withdegrees in the humanities or social sciences. Butstrong social skills turn out to be just asimportant as brainpower in determining futureearnings potential. Catherine Weinberger, aneconomist at UC, Santa Barbara, has beenanalyzing government data on thousands of highschool students and the incomes they earn manyyears later. Among her findings: People withbalanced strengths in social and math skills earnabout 10% more than their counterparts who are

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strong in only one area. In fact, socially ineptmath whizzes fare no better than go-getters whostruggle with numbers.

Big tech employers are widening their hiringhorizons beyond the STEM fields: science,technology, engineering and math. LarryQuinlan, Deloitte’s chief information officer,argues in favor of “STEAM,” in which the Astands for the arts. “It’s not enough to betechnologically brilliant,” Quinlan says. “We needsenior people who understand businessprocesses, too.”

This summer’s fierce race to beef up sales teamsis being played out every day in tech companies’hiring notices. Employee-software specialistWorkday has 60 open positions in sales,exceeding the 51 in technology development.Ride-sharing king Uber needs 427 more brandambassadors, partner-support reps and otheroperations wranglers, compared with just 168more engineers. Even Facebook–run by die-hardengineer Mark Zuckerberg–has 225 openingsright now for sales and business developmentspecialists, compared with just 146 for softwaredevelopers.

Bess Yount epitomizes the nontechie side ofFacebook. She earned a Stanford bachelor’sdegree in communication and a master’s insociology. Outside the classroom she roundedherself out as captain of the lacrosse team. “I’vealways had a greater love for words thannumbers,” Yount says. That hasn’t been aproblem. When she joined Facebook in 2010, thesocial media company was evolving rapidlybeyond its engineer-centric beginnings. Insteadof envisioning a day when ads could be bookedonline without ever talking to a human being,Facebook’s leaders began tapping into thebenefits of a personal touch.

As a marketing manager focused on smallbusinesses, Yount is on the road throughout theyear, striking a rapport with shopkeepers whowere raised on the Yellow Pages. She introducesthem to a new era of advertising in which it’spossible to target customers by age, gender, time

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of day, neighborhood and personal affinities.These bewildering new powers (“Should wetarget Rihanna fans? Taylor Swift fans? Both?”)seem easier and more inviting in workshops thatYount runs all over the U.S. On a winter trip tothe Berkshires, for example, she showedplumbers how to steer lots of ads intohomeowners’ news feeds right after a cold snap,so that people with frozen pipes would be likelyto call.

Such hand-holding isn’t cheap. Facebook spent$620 million on sales and marketing in the firstquarter of 2015, nearly double from a yearearlier. But the payoff for restoring humancontact has been vast. Facebook’s ad business,which was tiny in the days when everything wasautomated, now tops $12 billion a year and isgrowing more than $1 billion a quarter.

Even tiny businesses can gain a lot fromcustomized Facebook ads, Yount says, if she canjust help them crack the code. At a recentPhiladelphia conference she highlighted the waysthat diner owners can photograph a freshlybaked pie and then use geo-targeting to showthat photo to anyone walking within a mile of theshop. “One woman who did that managed to sellevery piece of pie within three hours,” Yountsays.

In the restaurant industry, Shawna Ramona isthe human face of the data revolution. Shegraduated from San Francisco State in 2002 witha degree in English literature. Now she is aniPad-toting “restaurant relations manager” forOpenTable, the online dinner-booking service.She calls on scores of restaurateurs a year,sharing insights that emerge from her company’sdata team. There’s nothing technical in herbackground, but she knows how to connect withthe old guard.

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Umberto Gibin and Shawna Ramona (Photo credit Eric Millette ForForbes)

On a recent Tuesday she visited Umberto Gibin,the proprietor of two of San Francisco’s mostpopular restaurants, Perbacco and Barbacco. Hestarted in the restaurant trade 45 years ago as ateenage waiter in Italy, learning to carve ducks atpatrons’ tables. Panache defines him; when hebellows “Arrivederci!” to a departing guest, thewhole restaurant can hear. His world is beingrocked, though, by Moneyball -style insightsculled from customers’ smartphones, checks andonline reservation data. Predictive algorithmscan tell Gibin how long each guest is likely tolinger and which bookings are the likeliest no-shows. “I’m trying to change with the times,”Gibin says. “But I’m a dinosaur when it comes totechnology.”

Ramona makes the strain go away. She worked inrestaurants for much of her 20s, helping manageeverything from steak houses to sushi bars. Sheknows when to make small talk about radicchioand when it’s time to circle a disappointingmetric on her iPad before gently saying: “There’san opportunity here for you.”

OpenTable is a case in point of how the techsector has widened its horizons. In the late 1990sCalifornia chip engineer Chuck Templetoncreated OpenTable as a pure tech play: enablinganyone to book a meal reservation online,instantly. The general public loved his concept.Most eateries, however, lacked the schedulingsoftware to make it work. So in 2000 OpenTablebegan putting muscle into building betterinformation technology for restaurants.

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Suddenly OpenTable needed salespeople. Yearsof selling helped OpenTable slip its software intomore than 10,000 restaurants by 2008. That wasa fragile triumph, however. Open-Table’sengineers kept upgrading the company’s seatingsystems and data analytics, only to discover thatrestaurateurs weren’t paying attention. Thatcreated a greater risk of customer churn. IfOpenTable wanted strong, lasting connectionswith restaurant managers and owners, it neededa second team of frontline relationship-builders.

So OpenTable executives began hunting forpeople who had waited on tables, tended bar ormanaged restaurants earlier in their careers. Thecompany was moving beyond its beginnings asan automation tool. The new priority, as saleschief Mike Dodson explains, was to find or trainevangelists who could “show how tech can enrichthe dining experience.” The influx of some 137people like Ramona has expanded OpenTableinto 32,000 restaurants, with only 14 datascientists needed to run its insight-crunchingmachinery.

At 4:30 p.m. on a recent Monday Ramonapopped into Marlowe, a bistro in the same trendySan Francisco neighborhood where Slack isbased. She greeted owner Anna Weinberg, whoalso owns Park Tavern and another property,with a big hug. The postwork rush hadn’t startedyet; Marlowe was empty. Moments later the twowomen were peering at Ramona’s iPad, where agiant “opportunity” was on display. In the pastyear, it turned out, thousands of Open-Tableusers had been told seats weren’t available atPark Tavern. Often people were trying to booktables far in advance. But Weinberg’s restaurantoffered only a 30-day look-ahead.

“Some people look two months out,” Ramonaexplained.

“Fine!” Weinberg declared. “Let’s do 60 daysthen. We’ll do it for all three of our restaurants.”

The next day Ramona worked her Uber accountto exhaustion, dashing into a wide variety of SanFrancisco cafes, bars and restaurants. At a

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hipster cocktail establishment, Bar Agricole,Ramona let owner Thad Vogler know that he wasgetting 37% of his online bookings from mobileusers, compared with 32% for his peers. Voglergrinned as if he’d just hit the lottery. Hisrestaurant had been doing a big social mediapush, he explained, and now he knew it wasworking. “This kind of input is endlesslyvaluable,” he declared.

In theory OpenTable could send data analysts onthe road to share the same information. ButGrant Parsamyan, OpenTable’s head of businessintelligence, shudders at the thought. He’s astocky man who favors plaid shirts at work.While he enjoys fine dining, he admits to beingstarstruck by the ways top restaurateurs projecttheir authority. “I wouldn’t be effective at all,trying to do what Shawna does,” Parsamyanconcedes.

When restaurateurs scoff at OpenTable’sanalysis, Ramona earns her keep. On a recentvisit to Town Hall, a San Francisco restaurantthat specializes in country ham and othersouthern-inspired cuisine, Ramona and acolleague, Denise Capobianco, suggested thatrestaurant manager Bjorn Kock wasn’t doingenough to attract large groups.

Kock bristled. “Our design does not lend itself toa lot of large parties,” he declared. Big groupstake too long to finish, he explained. Their rushof orders at the same time strains the kitchen.Besides, his restaurant’s long, angular layoutwould make big tables as unwelcome as aboulder in the midst of a stream. “Those tens!” hedeclared with a dismissive sweep of his hand. “Idon’t want them in our dining room.”

Ramona didn’t give up. “I see your point,” shesaid. “But what about trying an experiment onSundays, when traffic is lighter. You could offerone ten-seat booking at 5 p.m. That wouldn’tstrain the kitchen. It might be extra business thatyou wouldn’t get otherwise.”

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Kock nodded his head. “That could work,” hedeclared. “I’m totally willing to play around withthat possibility.” And thus the digital revolutionspreads a tiny bit further, thanks to whiz-bangcode underpinning OpenTable–and theinterpersonal skills of an English major.

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