The Most Important Lesson I Learned at Stanford

By: Reach for the Sky

First of all, no, I am not a Stanford graduate, I was there for a summer program. At this summer program our group was given the opportunity to attend a tour of EA as well as a lecture from one of their programmers. I learned much about the process a game goes through from conception to release, the marketing of games, etc. The most important lesson I received began with a question for the man who lectured us. "Have you ever been asked, by someone who didn't understand your field of work, to do something that simply wasn't realistically possible," His answer?

"All the time"

Apparently, it is quite common for designers, marketers, anybody who doesn't know anything about programming to make requests that are absurd or impossible, and it's up to the programmer to talk them down to something more realistic. I noticed this later at class, when we had opportunities to see what other students in other classes had been working on, as well as show off our own creation. I was often asked things like "why didn't you just do X" or "how come Y doesn't do Z" in the context of extremely complicated problems. Imagine someone asking Al Gore, "Why don't we just make more ice to make the planet cooler?" While I initially felt insulted and disgusted with the display of ignorance, I later found this to be irrational. These people had no reason to have any knowledge of computer science, and it's not exactly a subject you can skim the textbooks on and get a general idea. Even so, I found the frustration between the craftsmen and the ignorant quite widespread, and it didn't only apply to programming.

The answer, I learned from an instructor, is not for the worker to expect the client to be an expert in a field that is not his own, nor should an ignorant peer be content to wallow in his lack of knowledge. It is important to attain a basic understanding of all fields you will be working with directly. There is no quicker way to earn respect among peers than to express interest and knowledge of their chosen discipline. Never assume a job to be easy, especially when you don't know anything about it. Ask if a goal is realistically attainable, and if the employee says it isn't, try to understand what is so difficult about it so you don't make the same mistake in the future. It also helps to familiarize yourself with the limitations of a given occupation, so you don't appear foolish when make a request of a peer. And when an employee tells you something is impossible, it's helpful to know whether they are being honest or incompetent.

Long story short, if you work with people whose jobs you don't understand, or work with people who don't understand your job, or both, be prepared to meet them halfway. Displays of ignorance are annoying, but so are displays of snobbery and elitism. Don't presume that someone else's job is easy, and don't expect everyone to have a flawless understanding of what you do for a living.