Returning home for Christmas I had the chance to visit alma mater and attend a presentation done by some graduates of the same university. The purpose of the presentation was quite irrelevant (basically it was a recruiting event where HP was looking for new people for their QA division in Cluj), I joined in order to see the difference between generations.

Honestly, I was hoping to see a certain change in attitude, in behavior and in knowledge among the new generation of students, so I wasn’t so much interested in the presentation and in the presenters as I was in the audience. Why was I expecting that? Not sure. Differences appear between generations (see the X, Y, Z, baby boom, etc. generation) but also this generation is the first one that has not attended any form of schooling under the old communist rule.

The presentation took place in one of the university’s auditoriums, incidentally the one where I wrote my last exam. However, as soon as everybody settled down on their seats a strange familiarity struck me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but the guys at the professor’s desk  (graduates, maybe from 1-2 years ago but now in the position of HP representatives) had something about them that I’ve definitely seen before. Unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of familiarity that makes you feel good, pleasant and at home, it was more like a discomfort. Since I couldn’t quite tell what the problem was I decided to let it slide and see how it goes.

Unfortunately things got from bad to worse. The presentation was, well… uninspiring. The three young  gentlemen in front managed to be boring, could not inspire the audience and dismissed every single question without even trying to come up with a half decent answer – all three of them. Additionally they managed to deliver some sexist remarks of the type that you can only find in a male-dominated engineering school. The audience remained unengaged and were further alienated by the hugely superior attitude that the presenters managed to convey. Questions were few and far apart, there was no dialogue between the audience and the presenters and I sincerely felt that nobody really understood not only what QA was about but also why on earth would you want to work with these guys which didn’t even manage to be nice or funny at any point. I’ll stop the bashing right here.

All of the sudden it dawned to me where I’ve seen this all before, where the discomforting familiarity was coming from:  I’ve seen this all before right there, in university, probably in the same auditorium also, the only difference was that the guys sitting in front were some professors of questionable value. Trust me, I’ve had some very good professors in university, far exceeding my intellect but I’ve also seen a fair share of those which only managed to co-author (usually in groups of ten) books of 160 pages copied off user manuals.  Unfortunately the latter outnumbered the former.

That group of professors displayed exactly the traits described before: they usually managed to deliver an uninspiring class, convey an incomplete image about the subject and avoid any questions which would try to fill in the gaps. All this delivered from the untouchable height of a university professor that doubts it’s own value.

It appears that this was the role model that our presenters chose and obviously the time spent in a western and well-led company such as HP did not contribute a lot to change their attitude. Mind you I truly believe that the young presenters could have done a much better job if they only had somebody better as a role model.

Cognitive imitation (learning by imitation) is very powerful and I think this is what attending classes should be all about.  Classes are not for learning the formulas or learning a particular demonstration to a theorem.  You can do that in the privacy of your own home and you will need to spend a lot more that two hours on that anyway. Classes are for observing a professor which has a certain attitude and passion about the subject, has a certain methodology for presenting and solving a problem and can make certain analogies that put the subject in a new light in order for the student to be able to gauge new depths and insight in the specific issue.

I recommend everybody to take a look at Stanford‘s and MIT‘s videos of their lectures. There are some amazing personalities there, now accessible to everyone for free. If you can’t sit trough two hours of lecture alternatively you can look a the TED talks which are also some wonderful presentations only much shorter.

For those inclined towards math and programming I recommend taking a look at Donald E. Knuth‘s video lectures, found here.

What do I recommend to the young gentlemen from HP? You’re doing good, you’re on the right path. Shake off all the bad behavior learned in university and start being passionate about your work. If you can be passionate about it than you’ll think night and day about it, you’ll read about it and understand everything about it. You will be so excited about it that you’ll ‘infect’ the audience with your passion. You’ll not only be glad to answer questions but you will also find the power in you to answer a question by saying “aah.. that is interesting, I haven’t thought about it this way, let me research it a bit an come back to you” instead of claiming that something is wrong with the question. Respect your audience, there is a fair chance some are smarter than you and you can gain knowledge from them.

What about the students in the audience? Work hard. You’re not working hard enough and you don’t believe enough in yourself. Had you been working hard enough, reading, gathering references and preparing for the presentation (always prepare for a presentation, even if you’re in the audience!) you would have been able to smack the presenter every time he gave you the wrong attitude or wrong answer.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should smack a presenter at every presentation. But in this particular case have you realized that you were the ones making the rules? HP was after your brains, power, passion and youth.

Don’t sell yourself cheap, especially after all that hard work.