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Discussion on: I’m a Liberal Arts Grad, and I am a Software Engineer at Microsoft, ask me anything!

 
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Ben Halpern

I recall reading a pretty interesting anecdote about how Google's project at Stanford, which arguably was one of the most important engineering projects in the history the world, was kind of scoffed at because it was "soft computing", e.g. the part where the human interacts with the machine. It seems like their peers thought that anything that the humans touched with was for non-hardcore engineers to work on.

I think the opinion has shifted away from this extreme a bit. Anyway, do you have any thoughts on this anecdote or have you experienced this sort of thing?

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Julie Hubschman

It's funny you say this. I looked at going to a big tech school, and Computer Science was their "softest" major.

I think some companies are working on making more inclusive and diverse work forces which helps a lot. When an engineer makes a product they make it so that it works for them (left or right handed, etc.). Having a more diverse workplace gives more eyes on a product from different backgrounds.