COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 04

I’M A CURIOUS GENERALIST
Jack Smith, a Columnist for the Los Angeles Times for 30 years or so, wrote about a “parlor game” where a person is told to describe himself in one word. In a following column, he quoted my letter to him as saying, “I have explained the game and my word to people, and it seems, for better or worse, most everybody agrees that in both its positive and its negative connotations, my word is accurate. My word? Curious!” Mr. Smith’s original word was “befuddled,” but in this column he changed his “word” to Curious.

As you read this story, it will be quite obvious, that the word Curious (eager to learn, unduly inquisitive, prying, strange), really is my descriptor. Emmy’s cousins in Germany got a big kick out of this story, and said the definition of the German word for curious, "Neugierig" sure did fit, it was just as they knew me.

I am a “Generalist” not a “Specialist.” I was more than good enough to carry the load most of the time, but was astute enough to know when to call in a specialist, and bright enough to know which expert to call.

I knew an awful lot about a very wide variety of subjects, but was not necessarily the final authority in any one of them. That was very useful, both for me and for those I worked for. At one company, for example, I could do more different jobs than most people, and do them very well, and that’s why they kept me on the payroll, after my boss and hundreds of others I worked with, were laid-off.

I often had to deal with people who were not as good as they thought they were, or needed to be, but they were too proud or too dumb to admit it. That never bothered me at all. I would rather be an excellent generalist instead of a poor specialist, any day.

Need it be added that being a generalist, rather than a specialist was an important attribute for a designer of a production control system utilizing IBM punched card machines, and later computers, especially since no one had ever done that before. I needed to know about the manufacturing floor (I had done that), I needed to know about EAM equipment and later, computers (I had learned that), I needed to know about communication systems (I learned), and I needed to know about production control, and scheduling. (I learned that by observation, by common sense, and by questioning people who already knew that subject, but didn’t know anything about IBM equipment.)

The concept of Generalist also applied to the marching bands I participated in. I could play 6 or 8 different instruments, such as drums and several valve instruments. That is, I played them well enough to be in the band, but I also knew I was not a soloist in any of them. For example, while marching or playing in a concert while in the Ohio State Guard Band, I would swap instruments with the man next to me, when my instrument was needed for a difficult part. There were very few members in this band, so most every instrument was a being played by a “soloist.” Everyone else in that band was an artist — they had played in the New York Symphony, the Firestone Symphony, MGM studio orchestra, and the drummer had played in the Barnum and Bailey Circus band for 40 years.

They appreciated the fact that I “usefully took up a space,” but knew when to swap instruments. That’s a long story told in more detail in the Humberd Chronicles.